This phrase from the Book of Daniel in the Bible is the handwriting on the wall proclaiming Boeing has been measured and found wanting, and their market share will be divided among competitors.
It is a prophesy from the 6th century B.C.E. of what will happen to underperforming aerospace contractors in the 21st century.
Unfortunately, there are no domestic competitors: Boeing and Congress saw to that.
Cancel SLS? Couldn’t happen to a nicer rocket, or builder.
Failure is a great teacher. We need Boeing but not the corrupt underperforming leech of a company we have now.
They should cut everything that isn’t working, shrink the workforce, identify new opportunities, and then hire new people to fulfill those needs.
We need a robust commercial aircraft company, a robust transport military aircraft company and ….. for space, we have SpaceX
In an ideal world, we would have more than one company doing all of those things. For space, we need a lot more than just SpaceX, and we do have more. It will be exciting to watch companies sprout up and get crushed under over the next decades.
Boeing has a lot of potential if they can make the transition to the world as it will be in the near future.
There is little that Boeing does, any more, that displays even adequacy, much less stellar performance.
Commercial Aircraft? 737Max, 777, 787
Military Aircraft? KC-46, T7 Red Hawk
Space? SLS
True, but the potential is there. They have resources and some good minds, just need some winnowing and vision.
The rot in Boeing is too deep. Engineering talent that could rise up with a change in management fled the company a decade or more ago.
The cheapest way to dispose of surplus 5-segment SRBs is probably to launch them into the ocean. Anybody have any payload ideas? Fireworks? A little mini-capsule for an overly dramatic ground hog? Senator Shelby’s car?
Testing for the new Iron Dome of America
Would they be at all useful in asteroid deflection experiments?
What the hell? Someone accidentally deleted the last two paragraphs of Eric’s article, in which he blames Elon for causing American workers to lose their jobs and their kids to starve to death.
Oh well. Everything will be back to normal next column.
And those starving kids will never know their true genders without the government grants.
I’ve been curious about whether DOGE will touch NASA, due to obvious conflicts of interest. But then they probably don’t need to if Jared Isaacman is confirmed.
NASA’s budget so small they can put Mini Balls on it.
Half the budget of USAID.
Makes one want to cry
David Hogg?
😂
Anyone know when the Isaacman confirmation hearings are?
I find it interesting that people tried to make hay out of Starship exploding, causing debris, and creating an emergency TFR. Every launch vehicle designed and used by NASA has shed debris across the Atlantic. Maybe not as an emergency, but some of them did as well. SLS is no different.
Reading that spacenews.com comment thread is a great way to dispose of excess and unwanted brain cells. Several hundred of mine committed suicide at a certain point. It was tragic.
Gary no doubt.
Gary leaves in a huff from time to time, but he always comes back, like crabgrass in the spring.
But Gary is not the only combox pest over there now.
Ostpol?
Whoever would suspect a name like that?
There’s also Gordon Cornelius, and about half a dozen Chinese bots that swarm every SpaceNews story about the Chinese space industry the femtosecond it gets published.
I say use up II and III since the hardware is already bought. Cancel it there, that saves the new upper stage and the new mobile launcher.
This gives us a chance to beat the Chinese back while allowing time to implement a fully commercial architecture.
Yes, I know we are already first but there is a soft power cost to letting them lap us this time.
That’s my split the baby solution.
But launching them costs many millions of dollars. If the flights don’t lead to something why spend the money? Aren’t they working on a launch platform that is needed but is way behind in schedule and costing way more than planned and isn’t even done yet?
Do you want to let China beat us? There is a soft power value in not having to deal with that. If we beat them back, then we have some breathing room.
We don’t need to be bombarded with “Trump allowed China to beat us to the moon!” And how he put America in decline.
The first crewed landing on the Moon is scheduled, IIRC, for mid-2027. But that’s if it comes off on time. They have to fix the Orion heat shield, and get the launch base ready and successfully place the pre-positioned equipment etc…. so far no one has impressed me with their efficiency. China could very well beat us if we keep enabling SLS/Boeing/NASA sloth and inefficiency.
Plus, what has China got going that gets them to the moon in 3 years?
If all you want to do is beat China I bet we can put together a flag and footprint mission and get it done in 3 years.
Flags and footprints? Refuel the Falcon 9 upper stage from Starship. Beef up the heat shield and trunk consumables. That gets to LLO with propellant to spare. Hoverslam to the Lunar surface. Need another refueling in Lunar orbit before and after.
Beating China isn’t all I want, it’s just the first condition that needs resolved to pre-empt the political fallout.
You don’t need a heat shield to land on/in the moon.
Do you want to let China beat us?
We beat them there in 1969, didn’t we?
You missed the second paragraph:
“We don’t need to be bombarded with “Trump allowed China to beat us to the moon!” And how he put America in decline.”
It doesn’t matter that we went first in 69, what matters is the overall perception and that will be cited as further confirmation of America’s decline.
It’s can be anticipated and it can be pre-empted if we make wise choices.
M Puckett,
Every year we leave SLS and Orion in operation, $4 billion gets vacuumed out of NASA’s budget, and thousands of workers have to keep working on obsolete technology with too low a mission cadence to operate safely.
I don’t think a landing is possible on Artemis III anyway (and from what I hear, neither does NASA). There are just too many milestones being consolidated into one mission. I have little use for ASAP, but I think they made a good point about that the other day.
So, we might as well kill the whole thing now, and take the hit. I think an all-commercial architecture can still get there by 2030. And I doubt the Chinese can do it before then, either.
I think the only reason to fly another SLS is if there is any plan to keep Orion. I don’t know why I would keep either.
Sounds a bit like sunk-cost fallacy.
Cancel it, put pieces in museums, redirect all funds to accelerate commercial launchers and payloads.
Spending government money is very much an ideological competition and the sum is relatively small.
Everything else is so bad that it is hard to care about a couple billion more
Just had a look at the spacenews.com comment thread.
Like sad.
Don’t throw good money after bad. Scrap it all, burn the solid booster cores for July 4 celebrations.
Maybe Trump should create a Museum of Stupid Ideas wherein the SLS would be the first exhibit.
Ballast Bob would be the first exhibit
err, Bill
He could call it the Doge Museum!
Flying Artemis II & III at an estimated cost of $8bln won’t speed up either Starship HLS or Blue Moon HLS, so why not feed some money to SpaceX and Blue Origin instead? Refueling operations are necessary for both and that’s the long pole for landing. Dragon 2 can deliver crew to LEO without modification, then either ship can make the round trip from: LEO to lunar surface and back with refueling at two points (LEO and LLO). When a lander is ready and refueling is ready, that’s the soonest it can proceed anyway. NRHO (with or without Gateway) is not beating anybody “to the Moon,” only “near the Moon” and it doesn’t count any mor than Apollo 8 and 10 did.
the pork train that runs through congressional districts would have to be cut, which congressional members would be willing to give up their slice of the pie? When these plans were laid down almost a decade ago, or should I say chiseled into the stone tablets it was a done deal, it is really rare for projects like this to change after that snowball is pushed off the top of the mountain. it doesn’t end till it hits the bottom. Best I believe we can hope for is after gateway to nowhere is finished.
Pre-DOGE. On the other hand it’s going to be difficult for Musk to deny charges of self dealing when it cones to DoD and NASA. That’s why it was important to have Vivek on the team.
I’m also in favor of repurposing Orion and Starliner command modules as escape pods for early crewed Starship launches. Just in case. No hope for a pad RUD but might have saved an IFT-7 crew or a reentry RUD (probably a waste of time, but good PR).
If it were up to me (and it certainly is not). I’d redesign Starship to move the LOX and Methane header tanks out of the nose and down into the current cargo space, side by side, just above the fuel dome. Freeing up the nose space to put the pressurized capsule portion of Crew Dragons in a MIRV configuration. You have 9m of diameter and what appears to be plenty of “headroom” (ie length) to work with. Here’s what ChatGPT has to say about that (I wouldn’t go this this extreme) but it shows what might be possible in terms of size, not wet mass:
To solve this, we need to figure out how many 4m diameter circles can fit into a 9m diameter circle. We can think of this as a packing problem, where we want to fit as many smaller circles as possible within a larger circle.
Here’s a breakdown of the approach:
– The larger circle has a diameter of 9 meters, so its radius is 4.5 meters.
– Each smaller circle has a diameter of 4 meters, so its radius is 2 meters.
To arrange the circles efficiently, one common approach is to place the smaller circles in a hexagonal (or close-packing) arrangement, where each circle is surrounded by six others.
Let me show you a graphic to represent this. I’ll calculate the optimal arrangement visually.
It looks like the image generation didn’t come through. However, I can explain how many circles can fit.
Given the geometric nature of the problem, using a hexagonal packing arrangement (a common method), you can typically fit:
– The central circle takes up one spot.
– Around this central circle, you can fit six more circles in the first layer, making a total of seven circles in a compact arrangement.
This arrangement assumes the circles are packed as efficiently as possible, leaving minimal unused space.
7×7=49 crew in one launch. If you leave out the center Dragon you have 6×7=42 crew in one launch. OK an extreme w/o merit, but the fact that it works out to “42” is amusing to me. For the rest of you DON’T PANIC…
Ok, ai is bad at geometry. 7 circles tightly packed requires 3 times the diameter. You can’t put seven 4m circles in a 9m circle. You can fit 3.
You are absolutely correct. I should have used a little common sense. Grok can do geometry:
When I get busy at work I don’t follow up as I should. If we could enlarge the Starship just a bit the capsules wouldn’t touch. As is probably only two. Or 14 crew at max occupancy.
If you crewed two capsules at max 4 and 3 then you have redundant recovery means with a spacewalk. Or maybe a removable pressurized tunnel connection nose to nose inside a fairing. For on-orbit operation only. Spacewalk unnecessary.
You don’t need a trunk for either if you have a Starship for that. Solar panels on the leeward reentry side. Or maybe a fuel cell arrangement, kind of like the latter.
Normally just bring the whole down propulsively for tower capture and crew egress.
NASA has shown an unwillingness to do this level of risk. (except for Orion/SLS). It is up to SpaceX now.
The dual-capsule arrangement also gives you a Blue/Gold crew capability, where the crew schedules are exactly 12 hours apart. Giving you a 24/7 on-orbit capability.
The point that everyone keeps missing is, it’s a band-aid for the first several crewed flights, until you reach the trust level of early airliner reliability. Anyways, you could easily fit a dozen crew in a single Orion or Starliner since it’s just for ascent and EDL. Boom on the pad? Airbags? Anyways, by the time you need a hundred crew, you’re headed for Mars or bust.
There’s only 5 Dragons, two Starliners, and I guess 3 or 4 Orions on hand. Just build them into the first few manned Starships. which will get reused for some number of flights.
Should be A/B or 1/2 to create lots of drama and resentment. This is going to be televised right?
Army / Navy?
Great presser question: “Are you No. 1 or No. 2?”
😛
“””David Spain
February 10, 2025 At 6:38 AM
You don’t need a heat shield to land on/in the moon.””””
Unless you want to come home.
You can come home in a different vehicle than you land in.
Once again, this isn’t about Lunar HLS, it’s about a minimal LES for early crewed Starship launches. HLS is a different (and short-lived imo) beastie. If a Starship goes blammo with a crew aboard (especially like IFT-8), it’ll be very poor optic without an escape system. Mine’s a minimal idea for near term. Once there’ve been a hundred-plus launches without an incident, then maybe do without?
There are a four short-term advantages (a couple I’ve already mentioned):
1) Crew Dragon exists. You don’t have to design a new environmental support package, you can just leverage it.
2) Crew Dragon LES would be highly compatible with Starship architecture. You just have to figure out how to get the fairing out of the way. Might have to move the forward flaps (again).
3) Redundant return capability comes nearly free if you launch two or more capsules so that either one could hold a return crew at the minimal cost of a spacewalk.
4) Two capsules give you the ability to conduct 24/7 on-orbit operations at no additional cost or launches.
return to earth orbit and transfer to a dedicated landing vehicle?
Faster please.
Mene mene tekel upharsin?
This phrase from the Book of Daniel in the Bible is the handwriting on the wall proclaiming Boeing has been measured and found wanting, and their market share will be divided among competitors.
It is a prophesy from the 6th century B.C.E. of what will happen to underperforming aerospace contractors in the 21st century.
Unfortunately, there are no domestic competitors: Boeing and Congress saw to that.
Cancel SLS? Couldn’t happen to a nicer rocket, or builder.
Failure is a great teacher. We need Boeing but not the corrupt underperforming leech of a company we have now.
They should cut everything that isn’t working, shrink the workforce, identify new opportunities, and then hire new people to fulfill those needs.
We need a robust commercial aircraft company, a robust transport military aircraft company and ….. for space, we have SpaceX
In an ideal world, we would have more than one company doing all of those things. For space, we need a lot more than just SpaceX, and we do have more. It will be exciting to watch companies sprout up and get crushed under over the next decades.
Boeing has a lot of potential if they can make the transition to the world as it will be in the near future.
There is little that Boeing does, any more, that displays even adequacy, much less stellar performance.
Commercial Aircraft? 737Max, 777, 787
Military Aircraft? KC-46, T7 Red Hawk
Space? SLS
True, but the potential is there. They have resources and some good minds, just need some winnowing and vision.
The rot in Boeing is too deep. Engineering talent that could rise up with a change in management fled the company a decade or more ago.
The cheapest way to dispose of surplus 5-segment SRBs is probably to launch them into the ocean. Anybody have any payload ideas? Fireworks? A little mini-capsule for an overly dramatic ground hog? Senator Shelby’s car?
Testing for the new Iron Dome of America
Would they be at all useful in asteroid deflection experiments?
What the hell? Someone accidentally deleted the last two paragraphs of Eric’s article, in which he blames Elon for causing American workers to lose their jobs and their kids to starve to death.
Oh well. Everything will be back to normal next column.
And those starving kids will never know their true genders without the government grants.
I’ve been curious about whether DOGE will touch NASA, due to obvious conflicts of interest. But then they probably don’t need to if Jared Isaacman is confirmed.
NASA’s budget so small they can put Mini Balls on it.
Half the budget of USAID.
Makes one want to cry
David Hogg?
😂
Anyone know when the Isaacman confirmation hearings are?
I find it interesting that people tried to make hay out of Starship exploding, causing debris, and creating an emergency TFR. Every launch vehicle designed and used by NASA has shed debris across the Atlantic. Maybe not as an emergency, but some of them did as well. SLS is no different.
Reading that spacenews.com comment thread is a great way to dispose of excess and unwanted brain cells. Several hundred of mine committed suicide at a certain point. It was tragic.
Gary no doubt.
Gary leaves in a huff from time to time, but he always comes back, like crabgrass in the spring.
But Gary is not the only combox pest over there now.
Ostpol?
Whoever would suspect a name like that?
There’s also Gordon Cornelius, and about half a dozen Chinese bots that swarm every SpaceNews story about the Chinese space industry the femtosecond it gets published.
I say use up II and III since the hardware is already bought. Cancel it there, that saves the new upper stage and the new mobile launcher.
This gives us a chance to beat the Chinese back while allowing time to implement a fully commercial architecture.
Yes, I know we are already first but there is a soft power cost to letting them lap us this time.
That’s my split the baby solution.
But launching them costs many millions of dollars. If the flights don’t lead to something why spend the money? Aren’t they working on a launch platform that is needed but is way behind in schedule and costing way more than planned and isn’t even done yet?
Do you want to let China beat us? There is a soft power value in not having to deal with that. If we beat them back, then we have some breathing room.
We don’t need to be bombarded with “Trump allowed China to beat us to the moon!” And how he put America in decline.
The first crewed landing on the Moon is scheduled, IIRC, for mid-2027. But that’s if it comes off on time. They have to fix the Orion heat shield, and get the launch base ready and successfully place the pre-positioned equipment etc…. so far no one has impressed me with their efficiency. China could very well beat us if we keep enabling SLS/Boeing/NASA sloth and inefficiency.
Plus, what has China got going that gets them to the moon in 3 years?
If all you want to do is beat China I bet we can put together a flag and footprint mission and get it done in 3 years.
Flags and footprints? Refuel the Falcon 9 upper stage from Starship. Beef up the heat shield and trunk consumables. That gets to LLO with propellant to spare. Hoverslam to the Lunar surface. Need another refueling in Lunar orbit before and after.
Beating China isn’t all I want, it’s just the first condition that needs resolved to pre-empt the political fallout.
You don’t need a heat shield to land on/in the moon.
Do you want to let China beat us?
We beat them there in 1969, didn’t we?
You missed the second paragraph:
“We don’t need to be bombarded with “Trump allowed China to beat us to the moon!” And how he put America in decline.”
It doesn’t matter that we went first in 69, what matters is the overall perception and that will be cited as further confirmation of America’s decline.
It’s can be anticipated and it can be pre-empted if we make wise choices.
M Puckett,
Every year we leave SLS and Orion in operation, $4 billion gets vacuumed out of NASA’s budget, and thousands of workers have to keep working on obsolete technology with too low a mission cadence to operate safely.
I don’t think a landing is possible on Artemis III anyway (and from what I hear, neither does NASA). There are just too many milestones being consolidated into one mission. I have little use for ASAP, but I think they made a good point about that the other day.
So, we might as well kill the whole thing now, and take the hit. I think an all-commercial architecture can still get there by 2030. And I doubt the Chinese can do it before then, either.
I think the only reason to fly another SLS is if there is any plan to keep Orion. I don’t know why I would keep either.
Sounds a bit like sunk-cost fallacy.
Cancel it, put pieces in museums, redirect all funds to accelerate commercial launchers and payloads.
Spending government money is very much an ideological competition and the sum is relatively small.
Everything else is so bad that it is hard to care about a couple billion more
Just had a look at the spacenews.com comment thread.
Like sad.
Don’t throw good money after bad. Scrap it all, burn the solid booster cores for July 4 celebrations.
Maybe Trump should create a Museum of Stupid Ideas wherein the SLS would be the first exhibit.
Ballast Bob would be the first exhibit
err, Bill
He could call it the Doge Museum!
Flying Artemis II & III at an estimated cost of $8bln won’t speed up either Starship HLS or Blue Moon HLS, so why not feed some money to SpaceX and Blue Origin instead? Refueling operations are necessary for both and that’s the long pole for landing. Dragon 2 can deliver crew to LEO without modification, then either ship can make the round trip from: LEO to lunar surface and back with refueling at two points (LEO and LLO). When a lander is ready and refueling is ready, that’s the soonest it can proceed anyway. NRHO (with or without Gateway) is not beating anybody “to the Moon,” only “near the Moon” and it doesn’t count any mor than Apollo 8 and 10 did.
the pork train that runs through congressional districts would have to be cut, which congressional members would be willing to give up their slice of the pie? When these plans were laid down almost a decade ago, or should I say chiseled into the stone tablets it was a done deal, it is really rare for projects like this to change after that snowball is pushed off the top of the mountain. it doesn’t end till it hits the bottom. Best I believe we can hope for is after gateway to nowhere is finished.
Pre-DOGE. On the other hand it’s going to be difficult for Musk to deny charges of self dealing when it cones to DoD and NASA. That’s why it was important to have Vivek on the team.
I’m also in favor of repurposing Orion and Starliner command modules as escape pods for early crewed Starship launches. Just in case. No hope for a pad RUD but might have saved an IFT-7 crew or a reentry RUD (probably a waste of time, but good PR).
If it were up to me (and it certainly is not). I’d redesign Starship to move the LOX and Methane header tanks out of the nose and down into the current cargo space, side by side, just above the fuel dome. Freeing up the nose space to put the pressurized capsule portion of Crew Dragons in a MIRV configuration. You have 9m of diameter and what appears to be plenty of “headroom” (ie length) to work with. Here’s what ChatGPT has to say about that (I wouldn’t go this this extreme) but it shows what might be possible in terms of size, not wet mass:
To solve this, we need to figure out how many 4m diameter circles can fit into a 9m diameter circle. We can think of this as a packing problem, where we want to fit as many smaller circles as possible within a larger circle.
Here’s a breakdown of the approach:
– The larger circle has a diameter of 9 meters, so its radius is 4.5 meters.
– Each smaller circle has a diameter of 4 meters, so its radius is 2 meters.
To arrange the circles efficiently, one common approach is to place the smaller circles in a hexagonal (or close-packing) arrangement, where each circle is surrounded by six others.
Let me show you a graphic to represent this. I’ll calculate the optimal arrangement visually.
It looks like the image generation didn’t come through. However, I can explain how many circles can fit.
Given the geometric nature of the problem, using a hexagonal packing arrangement (a common method), you can typically fit:
– The central circle takes up one spot.
– Around this central circle, you can fit six more circles in the first layer, making a total of seven circles in a compact arrangement.
This arrangement assumes the circles are packed as efficiently as possible, leaving minimal unused space.
7×7=49 crew in one launch. If you leave out the center Dragon you have 6×7=42 crew in one launch. OK an extreme w/o merit, but the fact that it works out to “42” is amusing to me. For the rest of you DON’T PANIC…
Ok, ai is bad at geometry. 7 circles tightly packed requires 3 times the diameter. You can’t put seven 4m circles in a 9m circle. You can fit 3.
You are absolutely correct. I should have used a little common sense. Grok can do geometry:
https://grok.com/share/97112c8e-b4cd-4b87-9944-1fde4cae62e2
When I get busy at work I don’t follow up as I should. If we could enlarge the Starship just a bit the capsules wouldn’t touch. As is probably only two. Or 14 crew at max occupancy.
If you crewed two capsules at max 4 and 3 then you have redundant recovery means with a spacewalk. Or maybe a removable pressurized tunnel connection nose to nose inside a fairing. For on-orbit operation only. Spacewalk unnecessary.
You don’t need a trunk for either if you have a Starship for that. Solar panels on the leeward reentry side. Or maybe a fuel cell arrangement, kind of like the latter.
Normally just bring the whole down propulsively for tower capture and crew egress.
NASA has shown an unwillingness to do this level of risk. (except for Orion/SLS). It is up to SpaceX now.
The dual-capsule arrangement also gives you a Blue/Gold crew capability, where the crew schedules are exactly 12 hours apart. Giving you a 24/7 on-orbit capability.
The point that everyone keeps missing is, it’s a band-aid for the first several crewed flights, until you reach the trust level of early airliner reliability. Anyways, you could easily fit a dozen crew in a single Orion or Starliner since it’s just for ascent and EDL. Boom on the pad? Airbags? Anyways, by the time you need a hundred crew, you’re headed for Mars or bust.
There’s only 5 Dragons, two Starliners, and I guess 3 or 4 Orions on hand. Just build them into the first few manned Starships. which will get reused for some number of flights.
Should be A/B or 1/2 to create lots of drama and resentment. This is going to be televised right?
Army / Navy?
Great presser question: “Are you No. 1 or No. 2?”
😛
“””David Spain
February 10, 2025 At 6:38 AM
You don’t need a heat shield to land on/in the moon.””””
Unless you want to come home.
You can come home in a different vehicle than you land in.
Once again, this isn’t about Lunar HLS, it’s about a minimal LES for early crewed Starship launches. HLS is a different (and short-lived imo) beastie. If a Starship goes blammo with a crew aboard (especially like IFT-8), it’ll be very poor optic without an escape system. Mine’s a minimal idea for near term. Once there’ve been a hundred-plus launches without an incident, then maybe do without?
There are a four short-term advantages (a couple I’ve already mentioned):
1) Crew Dragon exists. You don’t have to design a new environmental support package, you can just leverage it.
2) Crew Dragon LES would be highly compatible with Starship architecture. You just have to figure out how to get the fairing out of the way. Might have to move the forward flaps (again).
3) Redundant return capability comes nearly free if you launch two or more capsules so that either one could hold a return crew at the minimal cost of a spacewalk.
4) Two capsules give you the ability to conduct 24/7 on-orbit operations at no additional cost or launches.
return to earth orbit and transfer to a dedicated landing vehicle?
Not a surprise at all…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL3qDpubXU8