« August 13, 2021 | Main | August 15, 2021 »
August 14, 2021 Archives
Saturday, August 14, 2021
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Weekly Space Report: SpaceX Starbase Progress, Orbital Refuelling Plans, Catching Starship in Mid-Air
Posted at
14:06
CONTEXT: IBM Solid Logic—When Monolithic ICs Weren't Ready for System/360
Posted at
13:04
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: How the Immune System Works
Posted at
10:40
CONTINUITY: Boeing Starliner OFT-2 “Hangar Queen” To Be Destacked and Returned to Factory: Likely Delay of Months
We've determined #Starliner will return to our factory for deeper-level troubleshooting of four propulsion system valves. With @NASA, we've decided to stand down for this launch window to make way for other national priority missions.
— Boeing Space (@BoeingSpace) August 13, 2021
More: https://t.co/oycWeRz156 pic.twitter.com/UzCZN66451
When Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago in September, 2001, I predicted that the result would be a decline in its technological leadership, reputation for quality, customer satisfaction, and market share. All of these have since occurred. One of the most historically-proven bonehead moves for what is at its core an engineering company is to move the senior management to a location apart, in this case by two time zones, from the engineering staff. For a while, Boeing distinguished itself as a leader in “maximising shareholder value” by buying back their own stock, deferring research and development investment, and milking existing product lines instead of developing state of the art replacements. But ultimately, “that trick never works”, and in reality one maximises shareholder value by designing, building, and delivering products which customers want to buy.
Fourmilab has long had the tradition of “vendor death penalty” for suppliers who deliver (or don't deliver) junk. It's long past time NASA did the same.
Posted at
09:30