Eight weeks after the Starliner spacecraft launched, NASA is still looking for possible answers to its technical issues—including the possibility of SpaceX lending a hand.
Boeing dwarfs SpaceX in experience building spacecraft.
Mercury and Gemini spacecraft were both built by the McDonnell Corp. That company merged with the Douglas Aircraft company (which built the 3rd stage of the Saturn V rocket) becoming McDonnell Douglas in 1967, which merged into Boeing in 1997. Boeing itself co-manufactured the space shuttle orbiters with Rockwell.
On paper and judging from experience and history, if you were going to pick a single company to build a spacecraft, it would be them. Not some brand new company run by a space-obsessed software engineer.
Clearly Boeing has huge cultural issues and has for a while.
Just saying if you wanted to go off experience alone, they’re the best there is.
A company doesn’t have experience. people have experience.
I can’t imagine that the current Boeing would have kept the spaceflight experts on staff while not being used, so I don’t imagine that they had any expertis when they began the project.
Likewise neither did NASA, because neoliberal policy had gutted them for much the same reasons, and is why they are pursuing the commercial space program.
What commercial programs are supposed to do is have multiple competing companies. NASA doesn’t want to rely on SpaceX or Boeing alone, or even NASA’s own rocket building programs.
What we’ve gotten is:
NASA’s rocket building program is an overpriced/overschedule boondoggle
Boeing needs to be taken out back and shot for the good of both space and atmospheric flight
SpaceX is fine for getting to LEO and the ISS
Russian Soyuz is a political land mine, and Russian manufacturing practices have gone to shit
Nobody else is fully capable at the moment
There’s some up and commers around. Most will fail. Maybe one will work out and this will get back on track. It shouldn’t just be SpaceX.
“lack of experience in the area…”
Boeing dwarfs SpaceX in experience building spacecraft.
Mercury and Gemini spacecraft were both built by the McDonnell Corp. That company merged with the Douglas Aircraft company (which built the 3rd stage of the Saturn V rocket) becoming McDonnell Douglas in 1967, which merged into Boeing in 1997. Boeing itself co-manufactured the space shuttle orbiters with Rockwell.
On paper and judging from experience and history, if you were going to pick a single company to build a spacecraft, it would be them. Not some brand new company run by a space-obsessed software engineer.
Clearly Boeing has huge cultural issues and has for a while.
Just saying if you wanted to go off experience alone, they’re the best there is.
A company doesn’t have experience. people have experience.
I can’t imagine that the current Boeing would have kept the spaceflight experts on staff while not being used, so I don’t imagine that they had any expertis when they began the project.
Likewise neither did NASA, because neoliberal policy had gutted them for much the same reasons, and is why they are pursuing the commercial space program.
You’re right, I didn’t realize all the merging that had occurred.
But clearly that legacy is gone. IDK who to trust with big space projects these days; it isn’t Amazon, SpaceX, or Boeing.
What commercial programs are supposed to do is have multiple competing companies. NASA doesn’t want to rely on SpaceX or Boeing alone, or even NASA’s own rocket building programs.
What we’ve gotten is:
There’s some up and commers around. Most will fail. Maybe one will work out and this will get back on track. It shouldn’t just be SpaceX.