Boeing just keeps bouncing along a long runway of failures. Today was another no-big-deal day for Boeing now that it is like most Boeing days. Like that 777 that lost a disposable wheel a couple of months ago or the 767 with nose landing gear that failed to open a month or ago, the company’s new space flagship, the Starliner, was unable to land safely, so to speak (meaning it could not dock with the International Space Station), because two of its shiny new thrusters went kaput, as the cosmonauts on board the ISS would say.
Who would have thought there would be a problem like this after three insignificant helium leaks?
These were, as I understand the article, the smaller thrusters used for maneuvering and stopping. No problem. The thing probably has a bumper, so just bump your way to a stop. I mean, I think these ISS cosmonauts are being fussy by establishing a perimeter within which the foundering or staggering Boeing Barliner is no longer allowed to enter until it sorts out and tests all its issues and can walk without a wobble.
This happened, after the Scarliner suffered two helium leaks en route and one prior to launch. “No problem,” said Boeing after the pre-launch leak. “It can still fly up to our standards.” The helium is just leaking into the astronauts cabin, so the worst that could happen is the astronauts would all start sounding like ducks. (Which would make them perfect spokespeople for the quacks that run this once-stellar company.)
It’s pathetic to have watched the greatest aerospace company on earth grind down into such a calamity of fails due to big-money beancounters making sure they were maximizing profits for the shareholders (and their own fat pockets) these past twenty years by minimizing costs. Bit by bit, that is where greed has propelled the formerly most safety-conscious aerospace company in history.
I think the FAA should erect the Scareliner, once it gets back to earth, as a obilisk-style monument to true corporate greed run amuck. Heads need to roll everywhere at the top of corporate as the crew tries to figure out how they are going to complete the mission. Maybe they could fill some balloons with that leaking helium as a way of keeping the helium from mixing with the cabin air and then use them like rubber fenders on the sides of a boat to help keep the spaceship from hitting the dock, while the cosmonauts pull it in with ropes.
I have just the man for Boeing’s new leadership
I think Nobel economist Paul Krugman should be—if he is not already in secret—Boeing’s new CFO. His kind of bean counting would work well with Boeing’s corporate culture. In a wonderful article listed below today Krugman gets excoriated, as the idiot that he is, for having written an article that says his mentor Joe Biden should stop being so humble about his economic success and start owning them a little more (I guess because the rest of us are not noticing his successes enough).
This is the same partisan-driven economist who keeps telling Americans on Biden’s behalf that they are a bunch of wusses to think the economy is rough on them and they need to wipe away their whiney tears and realize how great they’ve got it. Sure, a combo meal at MacD’s can digest a $20-bill faster than you can take your first bite out of the burger, but shut up already! You’re making more than enough extra money thanks to Biden (according to Krugman) that you ain’t feelin’ no pain.
Oddly, while Krugman says restaurants are not raising their rates that astronomically, Bill Bonner has composed an article today laying out how many restaurants are going out of business in the “restaurant apocalypse” that is sweeping the nation because, with the Democrats’ recent minimum wage boosters all over the nation, they cannot raise prices high enough to cover their higher labor costs without pricing away their price-exhausted customers.
I almost had to vomit today when I read another article that said inflation is as good as over now, so the stock market can be ready for its next great ride into the stratosphere, when I saw that the only evidence the writer gave was that Nobel-winner Paul Krugman said so. Those credentials ought to be all you need to know.
Once Boeing’s board makes Paul Krugman their CFO, they should also make Sleepy Joe the new CEO of the company as soon as he gets democratically retired in November because 1) he’ll probably outlive Boeing and 2) given the way he can astronomically rocket the US deficit to a trillion-dollar endless revolution around the earth each year, he can surely get the Stargazer into orbit.
However, I have to say this for Brandon: He is credited with creating a lot of new jobs when we didn’t need them because we don’t have enough workers to fill the jobs we already had, and according to another article out today, Biden adroitly solved that problem by giving 100% of the new jobs to illegal aliens while they await their hearings because they are allowed to work for five years as a cheap labor force while waiting. So, that’s an accomplishment to take to the polls!