NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as “Type A” mishap, says agency made mistakes
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The first years until you have sustained revenue is a major test. The next major test is when you get to the first transition of leadership, somewhere around the 15-30 year mark (usually on the earlier end for larger companies, later for smaller ones).
Other than that, it's all about threats popping up and how you handle them. Age doesn't really matter; there's no time limit. It's closer to a Poisson process, so there's fewer old companies but some live a very long time.
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In most part they got paid for agreeing on the contract to get a fair bit of pay for development milestones. And are now stuck with service milestones as their only remaining payments and, uh, very little ability to serve with the product demonstrated! Hence now trying to work with NASA to make the cargo test flight a separate contract piece to get paid on despite the original contract shooting straight for crewed operational flights on this mission iteration.
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I don't know if "collapse" is appropriate for any of your examples except Kodak. HP and Motorola split into multiple companies.
IBM market cap: $240B
HP Enterprise market cap: $28B
HP Inc market cap: $17B
GE market cap: $353B
Motorola Solutions market cap: $77B
Motorola Mobility: Sold to Google in 2012 for $13B (Equivalent to ~$19B in 2026 dollars)
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For those interested in older companies, Wikipedia has a page for that.
Kongō Gumi, construction company founded in AD 578. You could quibble they were purchased by a larger company in 2006, but they are still operated as a separate legal entity (wholly owned subsidiary). I don't think changing owners should be a disqualifier.
Since I brought up Japan and am wandering the topic far afield - is it time for Space Battleships yet?
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Nelson wasn't the only one in Boeing's pocket, and he inherited a lot of problems going back decades, but he did his part to ensure those problems were downplayed, ignored, and swept under the rug. We'll see how Isaacman handles being in the hot seat when Orion's problems show up during Artemis II.
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The question is whether Boeing can and will fix their engineering culture. And whether it is strategically smart for NASA and the US Government to support Boeing. It won't be quick or easy even if it works. There is a big risk that the sunk cost fallacy applies. It might be better to let Boeing fail and have other, newer, smarter organizations pick up the pieces. Personally, I would like to see Boeing redeem themselves. We learn a lot more from fixing what is broken than from writing it off. But that is a wish, hope, not expectation and certainly not a guarantee.
I do think that Boeing cannot fix Starliner without also fixing their engineering culture. If they succeed at fixing it, they will have business in space. After ISS, there will be other stations, and work to be done both in LEO and deep space.
I do think that Boeing cannot fix Starliner without also fixing their engineering culture. If they succeed at fixing it, they will have business in space. After ISS, there will be other stations, and work to be done both in LEO and deep space.
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There is no possibility of Boeing fixing their engineering culture without first fixing their management culture, and I don't see that happening without first fixing the institutional investment culture that rewards bad management practices in the first place.
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Apologies, misunderstood what "permanently ejected" meant - a ban from this thread (rather than a permanent one) seems an appropriate reaction.
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Why is it astonishing? The incident was already politically captured and exploited by Trump. This is lining up perfectly with that narrative, so he prztty much got carte blanche to dig to the bottom. It's an easy-peezy slam dunk.
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Scott Manley's reading of the report is now up for those interested:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L96asfTvJ_A
There are a few interesting tidbits in his analysis, but his understanding of o-rings and seals is (admittedly) somewhat limited. In the section talking about the potential poppet extrusion, he goes past teflon swell as the first potential potential cause without any explanation. Swelling of seals is a very common occurrence where the sealing material absorbs one of the materials it's sealing against. When dealing with o-rings, it's not uncommon to bake the rings to make them shrink when refurbishing a mechanical system.
For a poppet valve, this isn't necessarily a show stopper, however, because a swollen poppet doesn't necessarily prevent it from closing. The spring force squishing the poppet into the face can still generate the necessary line seal even if the poppet needs a diet.
However, if the passages after the poppet are quite narrow, it's entirely possible that the swollen poppet can act as a throttle and restrict the flow and it wouldn't surprise me that these valves have the minimum volume post-valve as can be managed.
However, such swelling on its own cannot explain the thruster failures as one would expect the distribution of these effects to be randomly distributed rather than clustered into one dog house or another. However, it's entirely possible that the diffusion of NTO into the teflon was substantially higher if they seal and NTO were at elevated temperatures. And any given doghouse will subject its thrusters to elevated temperatures or not.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L96asfTvJ_A
There are a few interesting tidbits in his analysis, but his understanding of o-rings and seals is (admittedly) somewhat limited. In the section talking about the potential poppet extrusion, he goes past teflon swell as the first potential potential cause without any explanation. Swelling of seals is a very common occurrence where the sealing material absorbs one of the materials it's sealing against. When dealing with o-rings, it's not uncommon to bake the rings to make them shrink when refurbishing a mechanical system.
For a poppet valve, this isn't necessarily a show stopper, however, because a swollen poppet doesn't necessarily prevent it from closing. The spring force squishing the poppet into the face can still generate the necessary line seal even if the poppet needs a diet.
However, if the passages after the poppet are quite narrow, it's entirely possible that the swollen poppet can act as a throttle and restrict the flow and it wouldn't surprise me that these valves have the minimum volume post-valve as can be managed.
However, such swelling on its own cannot explain the thruster failures as one would expect the distribution of these effects to be randomly distributed rather than clustered into one dog house or another. However, it's entirely possible that the diffusion of NTO into the teflon was substantially higher if they seal and NTO were at elevated temperatures. And any given doghouse will subject its thrusters to elevated temperatures or not.
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Seems appropriate to describe a comedy of errors.Comic Sans? Really?
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Hey, at least it wasn't Papyrus...Comic Sans? Really?
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From your lips to God’s ears…
That is true. Comic Sans is positively professional compared to present-day Boeing.
No, but it might have rustled them a little, lol.
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Just to follow up on this, we added a little language to try and clarify the ejects better, as documented in this feedback thread:
https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...ors-use-nonstandard-unclear-language.1511742/
We'll keep thinking about it, but at least for the moment the eject language now includes "from the thread" to hopefully help.
I also tried adding this note to a post this morning when I needed to both eject and ban, maybe that's the move when there's both at once:
We'll keep trying things. But the goal is clarity and transparency and keeping the community vibes.
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