this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
363 points (97.4% liked)

News

23306 readers
4156 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Bypass paywall: https://archive.ph/Kz2Sp

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] pwnicholson 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

"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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

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.