• Boeing came close to losing its Starliner crew capsule

    From Larry Dighera@21:1/5 to All on Tue Feb 11 06:12:42 2020
    Boeing's competence seems to be eroding. I hope the new CEO can turn
    it around. Perhaps Boeing's move of engineering staff to Chicago was
    a poor decision. Such a financial-based decision was a mistake, and
    should be corrected by moving headquarters out of the city that closed
    Meigs Field, and back to Washington state. Perhaps there are more
    important considerations than the bottom line in aviation decisions...
    But capitalism appears blind to everything but money. Darwinism
    teaches harsh lessons. Boeing will either learn that safety
    supercedes money, or go extinct. And these are the guys who are
    foisting NextGen ATC on an unsuspecting flying public. What could go
    wrong???

    --------------------------------------------- https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/boeing-almost-lost-starliner-to-software-glitches/

    Software Glitches
    Russ Niles
    February 7, 20207

    Boeing came close to losing its Starliner crew capsule during the
    abortive test flight in December in which the spacecraft failed to
    reach the correct orbit. A software-related timing issue caused that
    problem but another software glitch almost sent the vehicle tumbling
    out of control after it had reached orbit. Had engineers not caught
    the second error while the Starliner was in orbit, it would have fired
    the wrong thrusters as part of the re-entry sequence and triggered a “catastrophic” loss of control, a meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety
    Advisory Panel revealed on Thursday. Once the issue was fixed, Boeing
    was able to bring the spacecraft to a soft landing in the New Mexico
    desert.

    “While this anomaly was corrected in flight, if it had gone
    uncorrected, it would have led to erroneous thruster firings and
    uncontrolled motion during [service module] separation for deorbit,
    with the potential for a catastrophic spacecraft failure,” panel
    member Paul Hill reported in the meeting. Boeing was supposed to start
    manned flights after one test flight but it says its now budgeting
    $410 million for a redo of the December miscue. The budget also
    includes the cost to troubleshoot the problems and fix them. ---------------------------------------------------------------

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  • From jgrove24@hotmail.com@21:1/5 to Larry Dighera on Mon Feb 24 17:00:43 2020
    On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 8:12:50 AM UTC-6, Larry Dighera wrote:
    Boeing's competence seems to be eroding. I hope the new CEO can turn
    it around. Perhaps Boeing's move of engineering staff to Chicago was
    a poor decision. Such a financial-based decision was a mistake, and


    Boeing has ZERO eng. staff in Chicago, its all the corporate MBA type HQ.
    The closest engineers are in STL at the old McDon. Doug. Plant.

    You can thank the outsourcing of software to $9/hour foreigners for all the sw flubs, including 737 Max.. Corporate MBAs at their worst.

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  • From Larry Dighera@21:1/5 to jgrove24@hotmail.com on Tue Feb 25 06:07:16 2020
    On Mon, 24 Feb 2020 17:00:43 -0800 (PST), jgrove24@hotmail.com wrote:

    On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 8:12:50 AM UTC-6, Larry Dighera wrote:
    Boeing's competence seems to be eroding. I hope the new CEO can turn
    it around. Perhaps Boeing's move of engineering staff to Chicago was
    a poor decision. Such a financial-based decision was a mistake, and


    Boeing has ZERO eng. staff in Chicago, its all the corporate MBA type HQ.
    The closest engineers are in STL at the old McDon. Doug. Plant.

    You can thank the outsourcing of software to $9/hour foreigners for all the sw flubs, including 737 Max.. Corporate MBAs at their worst.

    I don't pretend to know, but it seems to me that it was not so much
    the system software coders who are to blame, but rather the system
    designers that failed to anticipate the consequences of sensor
    malfunction in their new systems.

    I heard the core issue that resulted in the 737 Max disasters/fiasco
    was the FAA granting Boeing personnel the authority to inspect/certify
    their own product(s?). At any rate, it was Boeing's dubious decision
    that additional crew training in the MAX was not required despite
    system changes, which had nothing to do with foreign labor as far as I
    know.

    Whenever safety is put in the hands of accountants, much to their
    chagrin the results of their cost-cutting shortsightedness ultimately
    results in higher expenses, not savings. But Capitalistic
    competitiveness demands that a firm adopt their competitors'
    questionable cost-cutting practices or be priced out of the market,
    albeit ultimately temporarily...

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