What's up in Space?

A Global manufacturing shift

If you came for the title, here’s another: What’s up with your face?

A high school friend reminded me we used to yell that at each other.

One more: It’s about time, it’s about Space, it’s about time I smacked your face.

Think that one’s from my dad.

Here’s something weird funny not haha funny: two Boeing whistleblowers have died under mysterious circumstances in the past 6 months.

Josh Dean went from healthy to hospitalized overnight. Doctor said he’d never seen anything like it before. That was May. John Barnett was found dead in a Holiday Inn Parking lot while he was in the middle of his testimony! Suicide? Lawyer said he was in very good spirits. That was March.

These guys were both part of the ongoing criminal investigation into Boeing’s manufacturing process and associated safety concerns that started in 2018 after the first fatal crash of the Boeing 737 MAX. There was a second crash in 2019. More whistleblowers have stepped up.

Today (Friday 9/6) another Boeing vehicle - Starliner - is meant to undock from the International Space Station and head home - stranding the Astronauts it brought up to the ISS three months ago.

To understand why this is another big what’s up with your face moment for Boeing, lets go back to 2014 when NASA awarded both Boeing and SpaceX contracts to build crewed spaceships. Boeing got $4.2B to build Starliner. SpaceX got $2.6B to build Dragon.

Since then, Boeing has made a single uncrewed test flight to the ISS and now this failed crewed mission. SpaceX has done better. Dragon flew a ton of uncrewed missions and ten successful crewed missions bringing 38 astronauts back and forth to the ISS¹.

I’ll tell you why Godzilla wants Starship in a minute

After helium leaks and failed thrusters on Boeings Starliner, guess who NASA trusted to bring their Astronauts home? Boeing’s archenemy, SpaceX. This means the two Astronauts they brought up 3 months ago for a two week jaunt are going back to tend their space garden for another 6 months²

Boeing is an icon of engineering and manufacturing prowess, what happened? Part of it is the disruption new and nimbler companies often bring when there is a shift in an established industry. Airplanes to Spaceships. Part of it is the distributed manufacturing model Boeing adopted over time which impacted both quality and performance.

In 2005, Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat. Companies scrambled to take advantage of a global workforce with localized labor, facilities and materials. COVID exposed weakness in the complex global supply chains that resulted and since then companies have retrenched to regain control. SpaceX created a Vertical manufacturing process where they retain control over all critical components.

Managing a big company through change isn’t easy. Andy Grove said it best when he was Intel’s CEO:

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.

Boeing is down, are they out? We’ll see, but its late in the game.

Andy Grove isn’t the CEO of Intel anymore and they are going through a crisis that feels a lot like Boeings. A few weeks ago Intel announced a 15% headcount reduction and $10 Billion cost reduction plan. Who’s Intel’s SpaceX? Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor, Samsung and more. I wrote about this in Chip Wars; Intel’s struggles are similar to Boeing’s. Computer Chips to Phone/AI Chips.

For one more example lets look at another Elon Musk company - Tesla. Tesla disrupted automobile manufacturing and Electric Vehicle production. No traditional automobile manufacturer has challenged them. Now there is a company in China called Build Your Dreams that is manufacturing more Electric Cars than Tesla.

Will the disruptor become the disrupted? Regardless, we are in the middle of a Global shift in manufacturing.

I want to close with a more complete answer to what’s up in space. When I last talked about SpaceX in Three Dumpster Fires, they had just launched the third test flight of their Mars colonizing, Moon traveling, rocket ship called Starship. That was six months ago on Pi Day March 14th. Three months later on June 6th, SpaceX launched Starship for its fourth and most successful launch. This time the ascent and stage separation were perfect, and both the booster and Starship returned to Earth mostly in one piece. The booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship in the Indian Ocean.

For the fifth launch - date TBD - SpaceX is going to try to catch Starship’s return to Earth in this giant Godzilla looking scaffolding they built and I really want to see that.

We’ll talk more about space then.

best, Andrew

1. For a good story of the future and ultimate end game of the International Space Station read this: How to Destroy a Space Station

2. I asked AI to tell me some jokes about the stranded astronauts, this was the best one:

Why did the astronauts start a garden on the ISS?
Because they figured they might as well grow some patience!