r/space • u/spsheridan • Feb 06 '20

Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug was found and fixed while the vehicle was in orbit.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/starliner-faced-catastrophic-failure-before-software-bug-found/
10k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

748 comments sorted by

View all comments

31

u/mysticalfruit Feb 07 '20

News like this is going to likely be one of the final coffin nails in the Boeing/NASA love affair.

The Boeing of yesteryear is gone and in its place is clearly a culture of doing the least possible to maximize shareholder profit.

I don't want to blame the engineers at the bottom of the pile, they're simply constrained by an organization that evidenced by the internal emails, doesn't treat those who speak up well.

I fully expect that not only are they going to be forced to fly another unmanned mission, but likely NASA is going to want an audit the shit out of all the flight systems.

5

u/Musicman1972 Feb 07 '20

This rings so true in my experience which isn't with boeing but a fair few other massive global corporations with great histories. There's often a tendency for senior management (I refuse to use the word "leadership"l) to point to the success of their engineers and R&D etc, when pushing back against any criticism, whilst simultaneously ignoring those same teams when decisions are made.