Haha, appreciate the serious reply but I was making a whistle-blower joke

dunno much about the IDS (defense) or S&IS (space tech) side of things, never really got to work with that stuff.

(Caveat: when I talk about SpaceX positively in this post I am speaking strictly about the actual engineers and technicians and scientists who do the real work there. I’ll never, ever defend the majority owner because he’s a shithead among shitheads. So with that said…)

As a space nerd I can speak a bit about the space side from an outsider’s perspective. The short version is that Boeing has been fucking up that side of things as bad as their commercial aircraft division.

The biggest recent example is the commercial crew program. It was started by NASA in 2011 to enable astronauts to launch to the International Space Station from US soil. The purpose was to reduce dependency on Russia for crew launches to the ISS after the space shuttle program was retired. NASA wanted two entirely separate crew vehicles that could launch on multiple types of rockets. If there was a failure of one spacecraft or rocket, and if there was a lengthy accident investigation and possible redesign, it wouldn’t cut off direct US access to the ISS because the other would still be operational. Two fixed-price contracts were awarded.

SpaceX would build a new vehicle called Crew Dragon based on their existing Cargo Dragon technology, and they were awarded a fixed USD$2.6 billion contract for all development costs and six operational flights to the ISS.

Boeing was awarded a fixed USD$4.2 billion contract for the same requirements to build and launch a capsule called Starliner. At the time, Boeing was seen as the more reliable choice as they had plenty of prior spaceflight experience. For example, Boeing bought parts of Rockwell International, the company that built the space shuttles. That’s how the US senate justified the extra contract expense.

Prior NASA spaceflight programs had a “cost plus” structure common in the US military industrial complex. Contracted companies could submit invoices beyond the original contract award. This is how US senators use NASA as a slush fund to financially benefit their friends. The real reason that the US senate was livid with NASA when the commercial crew program was announced was not because NASA was using commercial contractors (which they’ve been doing ever since NASA was known as NACA) because fixed-price contracts preclude that sort of slush-fund behavior.

What ended up happening is that SpaceX not only did everything NASA wanted ahead of schedule and under budget, but went above and beyond in capabilities and reliability. All the test flights and all the operational flights of Crew Dragon to the ISS have gone perfectly.

Boeing fucked everything up with Starliner. It’s been many years late. It’s way over budget. The emergency-abort pad test resulted in only 2 of 3 parachutes opening and a relatively hard landing. The first uncrewed test launch intended to go to the ISS actually had a system clock set wrong, so all the automation was doing the right things at entirely the wrong times. But the worst part is the service module guidance fuckup which could easily have killed a crew.

Starliner, like Apollo, was designed with two parts: the reusable crew module that comes back to Earth, and the disposable service module attached to its back with the engines, electrical systems, and various other systems. Normally the service module is jettisoned before re-entry just like many other capsule vehicles. It maneuvers itself away from the crew module so that there’s no risk of collision during re-entry. Boeing’s engineers discovered another flaw when fixing the clock issue: the service module’s guidance software would not have guided it safely away from the crew module after separation. It would have slammed the service module right into the heat shield of the crew module, basically guaranteeing the death of all crew on re-entry.

The dual-contract fixed-price setup saved NASA’s reputational and financial ass. Crew Dragon has continued to deliver crew and cargo safely to the ISS. SpaceX was awarded an extension contract so that several Starliner missions would be done with the now-proven Crew Dragon instead. Boeing had to launch a second uncrewed test flight on their own dime (rocket, capsule, everything) because NASA was able to hold them to that contract. Boeing’s CFO Brian West has gone on record as saying that Boeing would never sign another fixed-price contract because they can’t turn a profit on it, but they really could have if they were even halfway competent.

take a golden parachute deal and shuffle off to a different company

That guy might get a $100 million payout and then he immediately starts working for Evil Corp Death Drone Aeronautics at twice his old salary. Meanwhile Boeing will find some much lower level people to scapegoat. And Garland’s DOJ will to a PR job. They won’t prosecute any execs. Instead they’ll do what they always do. They’ll level large (if not huge) fines and give press conferences crowing about this is justice and how the rule of law is he law of the land. It’s a nifty reward to the most guilty (the rich and connected) because it’s their get out of jail free card plus their reputations can remain unblemished.

Because of woke

hipsters…

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Thank you though.