Boeing is toast.
Posted on 01/25/2020 7:17:32 AM PST by BenLurkin
The aerospace giant had named its hypersonic concept vehicle Phantom Express. That moniker is now oddly appropriate, since the spacecraft will never take physical form.
Experimental Spaceplane, previously known as XS-1, aimed to nurture the development of a reusable vehicle that could help loft satellites cheaply and rapidly. Indeed, DARPA wanted the craft to be capable of launching 3,000-lb. (1,360 kilograms) satellites into orbit 10 times in 10 days, at a cost envisioned to drop eventually to around $5 million per mission.
DARPA initiated Experimental Spaceplane in 2013. In 2017, the agency selected Boeing for the second and third phases of the program. Boeing won out over two other teams — one a partnership between Masten Space Systems and the now-defunct XCOR Aerospace, and the other a collaboration involving Northrop Grumman and Virgin Galactic.
During Phase 2, Boeing's Phantom Works division — which built the U.S. Air Force's two robotic X-37B space planes — was to design, build and test a technology-demonstration vehicle. Phase 3 would have involved test flights of Phantom Express, with 12 to 15 such demonstration missions originally targeted to take place in 2020.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Yeah. Boeing’s debacle with their meat and potatoes airline planes prevents them from doing a lot of things. They’re stymied with their 737 MAX folly
Ping!
Boeing needs far fewer MBAs and a good many more engineers.
Oh, and they can scrap ALL of this diversity crap. Either someone can design/build/repair or they cannot. Testing will reveal the truth. Failures can go to a place where talent is not an issue: politics/journalist/marshmallow studies profs.
It seems like every week this year Boeing planes are adding to their list of debacles. Whether it’s a plane needing time spill jet fuel on CA schoolchildren to save its engine for landing. Or a smoke filling a Ryan Air cabin.
Airbus? Not so much right now...
Something is amiss at deep state Boeing at every level. Drain the Swamp.
Boeing should be eliminated from further bids until they clean house.
I hope DARPA is smart enough to put this out for bid again. There are more players than in 2013 that could fill the role better than Boeing...
I think they are already screwed.
Once a technology and engineering driven company is infested with MBAs it is very rare for it to recover.
Anyone heard from phantomworker lately?
We built a plane that could go to the edge of space (the SR-71), surely technology has progressed enough where we can build a space plane. Government just needs to get out of the way...
If it is Boeing, I ain’t going.
Boeing is toast.
Angle of attack indicators don’t work too well in space where every which way is neither up or down. Boeing suits are stymied. /snicker
“Whether it’s a plane needing time spill jet fuel on CA schoolchildren to save its engine for landing.”
Look, the emergency happened shortly after take-off, so the jet was too heavy to immediately land and had to dump fuel.
I was on an American flight out of Orlando and we had an emergency and dumped fuel to land safely.
When flying the F-15E I experienced an emergency after takeoff and had to dump fuel over St Louis.
Dumping fuel is no big deal, done all the time and no, it doesn’t come gushing down like rain. Nope.
Fuel dumped turns to mist and blown every which-way by winds aloft and the speed to the jet. Look, take a cup of water, stick your arm with the water outside the car and dump the water at, say, 60MPH. Watch it immediately turn to a mist, and that just at 60MPH. Now imagine you are at 350MPH and dump water/fuel. Poof. . .it turns to mist immediately.
I place no weight on any person that claims they had fuel dumped on them and they could smell it or see it or feel it. Nope, no way.
The ONLY time I ever smelled and felt something that was sprayed from the air was when I was in my car and a crop-duster flew over a field alongside the road I was on. The mist by that crop-duster making a pass, drifted over the road and it was like breathing a gawd-awful pesticide.
I despise Boeings “leadership,” for sure, no loyalty there. But dumping fuel is something most all commercial heavy jets have the capability to do, not just Boeing jets. And remember, the aircrew up-front fly the jet and do what they do based upon their best judgment. They don’t give a damn about anything else but getting down safely for ALL (which includes them). And aircrews don’t work for Boeing.
I like their commercial jets, especially when flying Business or First Class on an international flight.
Don’t like or trust their “leadership”
Not government. . .LAWYERS.
IMHO.
It was a technology demonstrator, designing something that was never built before. DARPA was looking at developing technology and perhaps the technology was found to be unworkable. This is what usually kills most technology demonstrators.
It is good we set the bar high so we push technology further and/or find new technologies or maybe finding the technology envisioned by DARPA was found to be unworkable.
“Boeing needs far fewer MBAs and a good many more engineers.”
Indeed.
Most engineering is out-sourced. Every now and then a crop of recent university graduated Boeing engineer hires are paraded through during their orientation and usually the crop is around a dozen or so. I made a point of counting diversity points. Less than half of the recent hires were white males, most were a combination of females and minorities. (And the minorities/females usually had a higher entry salary than the white males. Seems women and minority engineers are in demand).
That’s what THEY want you to believe... ;)
If Boeing is out is Lockheed in?
perhaps the technology was found to be unworkable.
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