Boeing’s astronaut capsule is grounded for months and possibly even until next year because of a vexing valve problem.
Boeing and NASA officials said Friday that the Starliner capsule will be removed from the top of its rocket and returned to its Kennedy Space Center hangar for more extensive repairs.
Right, and at this point, Boeing looks to be roughly three years behind SpaceX, despite receiving a shitload more money for their so-far-non-flyable spacecraft.
It was almost two years ago that Boeing touted their experience in manned space flight, experience that, as I pointed out at the time, hasn't been relevant for 58 years, now.
This is what happens when a tech company ousts its engineers and scientists from management and turns things over to marketeers and MBAs-- it goes right down the shitter.
Hey, firing the engineers and scientists in management from a company that depends so much on the quality of its designs and products has worked out so well for other companies.
ReplyDeleteGive me a while, I'm sure I can think of at least one.
A big one was IBM...which made that move big time when it brought in Lou "The Cookie" Gerstner from Nabisco. Gerstner is widely credited with IBM's recovery and setting IBM on the road to the powerhouse it is today.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the rot started earlier, with the changeover from the Watsons (when it was essentially a family business treating its people as family) to CEOs who began to shed all that nonsense in pursuit of higher profits and, to everyone's utter surprise, higher compensation. It's taken a long time to gut the company, but they managed.
One of the men (or is it creatures?) that Gerstner brought along with him when he left Nabisco was a "numbers" man, who could make the balance sheets dance and sing like a Vegas one-armed bandit hitting the jackpot. Who needs product or customer satisfaction when you've got a magician writing the balance sheet? For that matter, who cares about the worker bees? I the words of one IBM manager, "Headcount is interchangeable, they make no difference". What matters is the Wizards of Oz pulling the levers. All goodies to the C-suite; they are the anointed ones with endless fairy dust to tell you how good things are.....