The first crewed voyage of Boeing’s Starliner was supposed to last around a week, but the high-stakes mission is still in limbo eight weeks after launch.
Their high-stakes mission was supposed to last about a week — but 56 days later, two NASA astronauts are still aboard the International Space Station, waiting as teams on the ground try to figure out how to bring them home safely in the Boeing spaceship they rode to orbit.
The beleaguered Starliner capsule has two problems: its propulsion system is leaking helium and five of its thrusters malfunctioned as it was docking with the space station. Mission managers were aware of the leaks before the vehicle lifted off but had said they were unlikely to affect the flight or the astronauts’ safety.
So managers made that decision? Not engineers? Rocket scientists?
So they are all jockeying over who is going to fall on their sword when this ship blows up on reentry. We’re going to hear later about an engineer who tried to put a stop to it but was overruled because there was only a 30% chance of everything going to hell. It’s the Challenger all over again in slow motion.
Just scuttle the ship and send a rescue mission. And fire whoever they are throwing under the bus, since that’s the only closure we’re likely to get.
Steve Stich, the manager for the program, is an engineer.
I’ll take that shred of hope. Thanks.
As an aside, turning on split vote count display on Lemmy really shows how petty some people can be.
Who in their right mind decided that this comment was worth a downvote?
I have a very small very petty fan club. Fortunately, I don’t care other than I laugh that I’m living in their head rent free.
Mission Manager is a technical role, not a managerial position. They might also be people managers, but the role is about managing the mission. And even if they are also people managers, they had to be engineers or scientists first to start working at NASA.
And I think they can’t simply scuttle the ship. I read they need humans in the ship to get it to properly disconnect from the station.
NASA actually employs a very large number of people who are neither scientists nor engineers. Going to space requires a very diverse workforce.
Also, it’s not “Mission Manager”, it’s “Mission Operations Manager”.
You’re right that someone doesn’t end up as the MOM of a mission without experience in the technical roles that they are managing.
Thanks for stating the obvious. I pretty clearly meant working at NASA in a technical role where one could move up to managing engineers/scientists. You don’t move from Human Resources or Legal or Janitor or Machinist or Admin Assistant or Graphic Designer or whatever to Mission Ops Manager or to a role people managing engineers/scientists (this COULD happen but would be incredibly rare).
As far as correcting me on Mission Operations Manager, I have no clue what their title is. I was only responding to the actual article saying “Mission managers were aware of the leaks.”
The leaks were examined and found to benon-critical. They were even controllable. No helium has leaked since docking with ISS and there is plenty to get home.
The problem has been the crew capsule and the space propulsion module are 2 different pieces. The capsule comes home. The propulsion module gets ditched in space. NASA and Boeing have been taking their time to review the propulsion module (leaks and all) while docked at ISS because they can’t bring it home.
Nothing much has changed from all that. NASA is in control of the mission. It’s all proceeding at their pace. I wouldn’t trust any spin Boeing makes. But watching the NASA mission reports shows there isn’t much reason for concern.
I think or hope that these managers were engineers in the past but at the same time wont be surprised if they are not. I mean like, isn’t it a thing in the aerospace or any engineering industry to promote engineers up until they become managers and such? It does feel like Challenger 2.0 :( hope they return safely.
Technical people that move into management usually (but not always) suffer from something I’ve started calling management brain rot. They’re exposed to the spreadsheet warriors and their corporate jargon, and it doesn’t take long for the good ones to give up and the bad ones to thrive in a, let’s call it, “low-information environment.”
The first-time I was promoted to management, I had no idea what I was doing. Managing people is a totally different skill set to the highly technical positions I had before. So I decided to look into management courses etc. to try to figure it out. I convinced my company to pay for a few graduate level courses.
After a very short time in these courses, it became abundantly clear nobody else had a clue either. They had ideas and "case studies’ but no actual proof of anything. It was all a bunch of bullshit fads to make money.
Over the decades I have come to understand why a good manager is such a unicorn. A good manager has to care about both the people and the business equally. It’s a razor thin balancing act. I have met exactly one person who fits this model.
You have to care about the people, to foster a culture of caring about the work. Caring, motivated people are the backbone of a business - they aren’t easily replaceable resources that you just hire off the street as needed.
suddenly the carrots and the sticks are strictly tied to Key Performance Indicators, which are ultimately short-term financial with inflation. whats best or safest or ecological or wise or in the long term best interests of the workers or the customers doesn’t come into the math. try to refute this and you are quickly replaced.
Any time I hear anything about KPIs I immediately turn my brain off not because I don’t understand it, but because I maliciously don’t give a fuck.
I’ve been out of work for 4 months and tbh, getting desperate. But I saw a job posting that talked about KPIs and didn’t even apply. Homelessness would be less shitty than dealing with that (I say having never been homeless and probably not going to be).
This is the Mission Manager, not “manager.” The person who is the Mission Manager can be but isn’t necessarily also a people manager.