Technology

Them and the military. There's only one other major airplane military contractor, Lockheed, and then a couple of smaller companies.

The 6th gen fighter program, Next Generation Air Dominance, is supposed to be a family of planes where one human plane controls a small squadron of drones of various models. The Air Force gave contracts for two of those drones to some of the smaller companies beside Boeing and Lockheed. They tend not to come right out and say these things, but a good guess as to why is that they don't want to have those two be the only options.

NASA’s biggest issue over the last 35 years is that it became a political target. It is really hard to do long term design when your mission changes every 4 years along with a different budget. NASA should have a budget that is only reapproved every 30 years and should not have to worry about outside influence from a president dictating its mission.

I work in automotive as an engineer and that would be a red flag in our industry too. Our safety standards are only a fraction as strict as aerospace for obvious reasons (we’re not shooting cars through the atmosphere at the speed of sound!), but we’d never get away with this with the amount of audits and accountability that we’re held to. This whole saga is absolutely insane.

Hmm, space is a little different because so many products are one-offs. It’s hard to design checklists and detailed procedures when you’re making what are essentially prototypes each time. So you make more general processes and then your engineers apply them as needed to each unique build. It can end up looking like a bit of a mess. Space builds rely a lot on expert techs, good modular documentation, and multiple layers of engineering oversight because things change along the way and you can’t always plan for it.

I’m a process engineer at a different aerospace company. I standardize as much as I can and work hard to make instructions clear but man it’s a struggle. Boeing’s space group needs to pay people enough to retain good talent, because they’re all making decisions all day long.

This is the utopia of capitalism.

Oh, agreed. And partially why I mentioned Boeing getting smeared in the news in my statement too. Pay means a lot but it's not everything. Good managers and work a person can be proud of goes a long way.

Space industry attracts a ton of passionate people who would stick around to do cool things for mediocre pay. But not if the pay gets too low and/or when the work is not something to be proud of.

E g., I've already got a mediocre paycheck, why accept a mediocre paycheck and the grief of a worsening reputation. Someone currently at Boeing for mediocre pay can find another mediocre job elsewhere but it will still be better because the new company isn't getting dragged in front of Congress for killing people to save money.

The sad part is that will never happen in a timely manner as things stand currently, thanks to SCOTUS weakening the powers of federal agencies. The FAA should put their foot down, but it will likely get dragged out in legal battles over "the meaning of words like 'safety.'"

I've wondered about this, killing the "company" never really seemed like that big of a deal, as the structure (both physical building/tool/systems and operationally) don't simply vanish. You still have the knowledge and skillsets in the population, and the supply chains still exist.

The real problem with these "too big to fail" entities is that the people pulling the levers that cause failures never have any consequences whatsoever.

Yeah, you'll always need banks, energy, transportation, defence etc - operational mechanisms for exchanging goods, building, buying etc will never go away or 'fail' - but their operational practices absolutely could and should change

I'm so sick of the wealth class abusing absolutely everything to guarantee themselves more money than they could ever spend.

Sadly getting something new and better will take decades and Airbus cannot handle the (airline) market alone. They also need to have a concurrent cause having an Airbus monopoly could make them sloppy on the long run. The C suite at Airbus are probably the first ones to want Boeing to survive as they know the trouble they’ll be in if they are alone.

Sure the FAA needs to do this. We also need to fund the FAA and other regulatory agencies at the level they could. Whole towns in Texas have had large portions of them vaporized. Due to no proper OSHA and hazardous chemical safety handling inspection and accountability. And yes you read that right. Plural, it's happened multiple times.

Often tens to hundreds of inspectors at most. Employed by these agencies are responsible for inspecting tens of thousands of sites each across several States because they are so under staffed and funded. And you want to guess who's responsible?

Don't say "no" just because it hasn't worked yet!

Be bold! Be daring!

Stomp on a CEO's crotch!

It's what we call a normal day at Boeing

That’s Boeing quality for you.