Posted on 08/03/2024 7:12:11 AM PDT by Salman
Lurking in Boeing's woeful Q2 financials is an admission that while its Starliner spacecraft might be struggling when it comes to burning fuel, it has no problem whatsoever setting fire to dollar bills.
The Calamity Capsule is currently attached to the International Space Station (ISS) while engineers scrutinize test results and finalize procedures for bringing the Boeing spacecraft – and its two crew members – back to Earth.
The word "calamity" might equally apply to the impact of the project on Boeing's finances. The troubled aerospace titan's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed it would be increasing its "reach-forward loss on the [Starliner] program" by another $125 million.
The losses incurred by Boeing thanks to Starliner have comfortably breezed past $1 billion, and will likely surpass $1.6 billion before long. "Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods," Boeing observed.
It is now almost ten years since NASA handed Boeing a contract to develop a vehicle to transport crew to and from the ISS. John Mulholland, then Boeing VP and Program Manager for Commercial Crew and now Boeing's Program Manager for the ISS, said: "We're on track to fly in 2017, and this critical milestone moves us another step closer in fully maturing the CST-100 design."
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(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.com ...
“finalize procedures for bringing the Boeing spacecraft – and its two crew members – back to Earth”
So what I see is Boeing is too proud to ask SpaceX to bring two astronauts back to earth....I guess their reputation (whatever that now is) is more important than two lives.
It appears that this word salad thing is catching on.
> I guess their reputation (whatever that now is) is more important than two lives.
Perhaps they’ll just clean up all the loose ends by designating those two as whistleblowers.
Rubes.
Article: “finalize procedures”
What matters is whether those “procedures” actually work.
:-)
LOL. Obfuscation and dissembling are very useful tools for the elites. It keeps them from ever being held accountable for anything.
They need to come up with a Starship Max 8 version.
This would make a good Babylon headline !!
I left Boeing after over 20 years because of “Share Value”
They emphasized engineering excellence until the merger with MacDoD then it was all about the money.
So I left, in disgust.
If you make the best product in the world, you will make lots of money. But BA and MA guys haven’t figured that out
their focus is on quarterly earnings.
You made the right choice. That merger with McMoney Douglass was the end of Boeing.
Sounds like t hey need to do a “mission assurance” review - the latest inside the beltway bureaucratic obfuscation to cover the fact that no one is in charge, no one is responsible and no actually knows what the eff they are doiong.
Thank you!
And you would have thought contingency plans would have already been in place for this.....which gives me even less confidence in Boeing’s ability.
Agreed—the astronauts really drew the short straw on this one...they were baited and switched.
Corporatespeak is nothing new, it’s just gotten more unintelligible
Boeing was doomed the moment the MBAs and other bean counters took over. They went from an aircraft manufacturer to a general contractor, just assembling other manufacturer’s parts to make their product. The move to Chicago was all part of this idea, separating the actual construction from the corporation.
The founders of the company are all spinning in their graves I am sure.
Their reputation will take a bigger hit if they kill the two passengers than it would if they hire SpaceX to bring the humans home.
If NASA was smart, they'd tell Boeing to hire SpaceX and to bring the Boeing craft back empty. If Boeing makes a safe return on the test flight, continue to throw good money after bad; if not, cancel the contract.
But NASA has shown poor decision making skills since they got rid of the Nazis.
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