Another one of Boeing’s state of the art craft shit the bed, fell out of the sky, and failed.

Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

Starliner’s December test flight had to be cut short due to a well-publicized timing error that delayed the spacecraft’s service module from performing an orbital insertion burn. This caused the thrusters on board the service module, which provides power to Starliner during most of its mission, to fire longer than expected. As a result, the spacecraft did not have enough fuel to complete a rendezvous with the International Space Station, a key component of the test flight in advance of crewed missions.

This is a major fuck up for Boeing.

To make it worse, Boeing’s Starliner costs 60% more than its SpaceX competitor.  More expensive and worse performance is not a good metric.

Why did this happen?

Boeing didn’t conduct end-to-end tests on Starliner before its failed flight
The company divided testing into small chunks and failed to spot issues that led to the flight’s failure.

Boeing Starliner’s first unmanned flight failed in December, because the aerospace giant divided its tests in small chunks instead of conducting longer tests that simulate the whole process from launch to docking. Starliner program manager John Mulholland has revealed at a teleconference that the company thought it would be “more logical to break the mission phases into chunks and do a lot of testing in those smaller chunks.” Doing a single test run from launch to docking takes over 25 hours, after all.

Excuse me, but WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK BOEING?

I have spent eight years as a test engineer and failure analyst.  Testing individual components is an important step in the testing process.  But after you get all those parts approved, you have to test the whole assembly.

Sometimes, things just don’t fit together and interact the way you expect them to and it’s not until you test the assembly that you figure that out.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve experienced that.

They skipped 25 hours of testing on a $4.3 billion project.  An error that is going to cost them $410 million.

NASA and Boeing formed a team to investigate what happened, and a report recently published by Orlando Sentinel said that the fact that the company didn’t do an end-to-end test took NASA by surprise. [program manager John Mulholland] defended Boeing at the conference, telling reporters:

“…I really don’t want anyone to have the impression that this team tried to take shortcuts. They didn’t. They did an abundance of testing. And in certain areas obviously we have some gaps to fill.”

That’s a big fucking gap to fill.

Mulholland said that going forward, Boeing will continue doing tests in smaller chunks, but it will also conduct longer end-to-end testing. According to The Washington Post, NASA is still thinking whether to allow Boeing to proceed with its first manned flight to prevent delays or to require the company to successfully complete an unmanned flight first.

If I were NASA, I wouldn’t want to stick astronauts into a fucking rocket that HADN’T BEEN ADEQUATELY TESTED FIRST.

You do not skip out on testing like this.  It’s like Ford putting cars into production without a prototype ever being driven around a test track and saying “we tested all the parts independently and they passed, so why bother testing the whole car?”  What sort of person would go to a dealer and buy one?  Nobody, that’s who.

You would think a company like Boeing, a 103-year-old aviation company that was once the best aircraft manufacturer in the world would know that.

But they forgot.

Somewhere along the line, Boeing management forgot that they are in the business of making aircraft.  They think of themselves as BA (NYSE).

When you are an aerospace company, you approach things from an engineering perspective.  Your goal is to make the best aircraft you can.  You worry about tests and performance.

When you are a stock value, you worry about your shareholders getting pissed at you.  You cut corners to save money on testing and then your fucking plane falls out of the sky and your spaceship fails to enter orbit.

The passengers may fall screaming to earth to die in a fiery crash, but management survives with their golden parachutes.

This is how you fuck up what was once a respected aerospace company, by forgetting that it’s an aerospace company.

Right now, I want to apply to Boeing to be both a test engineer and CEO.

Yeah, I know I’ve never managed a company with $180 billion, so there will be a bit of a learning curve.  But I can say with absolute certainty that as a licensed professional engineer, I’m not going to launch a single platform before it has been proven to me to be sufficiently tested.

I won’t even require the $23.4 million salary of the current CEO.  I’m willing to take the job at one-tenth that if I can work out of the Huntsville office complex.

I think this is a very generous offer and Boeing should take me up on it now.

They are soon to be launching their future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) helicopter for the US Army, and if recent Boeing history is any indication, they won’t have suitably tested that platform and on it’s first Army trial, the autopilot will flip the helicopter upside-down and dump the aircrew into the rotors to be sprayed all over the battlefield like chum.

I’ll make sure that doesn’t fucking happen before it costs Boeing another half-a-billion dollars.

This is a video from CNN about why socialism is on the rise among voters under 30.

I have seen comments on other conservative websites about this and how this shows that the young are not educated about the truth of socialism.

That is absolutely true.  Most young people who are socialists or Bernie supporters have no idea what socialism really is like or what it really does to nations.  Their Leftists college professors have lied to them.  Their understanding of history is wrong.

Also, socialism will absolutely not solve their problems.

Bernie’s Medicare for All and the elimination of private insurance will be a disaster.  It will make the VA scandal under Obama, where veterans died waiting in a bureaucratic nightmare for rationed treatment, the national standard for health care.

In Cuba, people have to bring their own blankets and toilet paper to the hospital.  In Venezuela, they would have to do the same, except there is no toilet paper and they’ve eaten their blankets.  Under Bernie’s plan, your local pharmacy will look like a 1980’s era Soviet grocery store, because he just has to go after those greedy pharmaceutical companies.

The cost of college is the result of government-backed student loans and federal funds that feed a tuition hungry administration monster and their wasteful pet projects.  “Free public college” will only feed this monster directly and make it bigger.  When the Soviets starved, they didn’t send more people to work on the farms.  They brought in more apparatchiks to plan the agricultural economy.  The bureaucracy always feeds itself.

Socialism is not a solution.

The point of me posting this, and the piece that is missing from every other conservative site that has, is this:

Listen to what the kids are saying.

They have experienced hardship.  I legitimately feel bad for the kid whose dad never had healthcare.  I have lived in rust belt cities and feel for the kid from a poor coal-mining town in West Virginia.

The “y’allidarity” kid needs to be a socialist because he looks like he can’t work a Starbucks espresso maker and doesn’t have the upper body strength to swing a hammer if he knows which end of one to hold.

The hardship that they experienced is the gap in the door that socialists professors use to get their toe in.  The lie of socialism applies to these kids because they have seen the ugliness of unchecked vulture capitalism.

You can say “but they are Tweeting about socialism from their iPhones.”  But that is a stupid argument that doesn’t address the core issue they face.  Having an iPhone doesn’t matter when your boss comes to you and makes you train your H1B visa tech worker that is going to replace your job in 30 days.   (Yes, that shit happens, I personally know people who it was done to.)

This has to be the new frontier of Conservativism.

Once upon a time, the Republican party was at the forefront of taking on trusts and monopolies.  We recognized that those were damaging to the market economy.  A monopoly prevented participation in the market and harmed many more people than it made rich.  Anti-trust legislation was enacted to prioritize the health of the market economy over the personal fortunes of a few robber barons.

It is on that principle that I see the need for new regulations.  Gutting a factory and offshoring manufacturing, relacing workers with low-cost H1B visa workers, leveraged buyouts harm the market economy.

It creates an uneven playing field where a small fraction of people can become insanely wealthy, not by creating something good, but by making American’s miserable.  Putting a Midwestern or Appalachian town out of business and onto welfare harms the market economy.

If, as conservatives, we value a healthy market economy that builds wealth for a growing middle class, we must reign in the damaging influences of the vulture capitalists.

I’ve said this before about the rise of white supremacism.  Happy, middle-class white people with good jobs, career prospects, and upward mobility do not become white supremacists.  White supremacism is what poor, miserable white people glom onto to make them feel better about themselves because they feel like losers and need someone to blame.

The same thing applies to socialism.  Happy, middle-class white people with good jobs, career prospects, and upward mobility do not become socialists.  Socialism is what they glom onto as a solution to the real problems that they face, and they blame capitalism as a whole for their misery.

If we want fewer socialists, which I do, than we need to relieve these kids’ misery.  Not with free stuff, but with opportunities, jobs, and upward mobility.  That is where the market economy excels, just as long as we put an end to the reign of the CEO’s that see employees as a cost to be outsourced instead of an asset to be developed because they care more about today’s stock value bonus than the stability of the company over years.

A buddy of mine alerted me to this.

From NBC KSDK5 in St. Louis:

‘I’ve been failed by the system’ | Teen walks free after neighbor says he broke her nose, left her in bruises

Alicia Clarke said exactly a week ago she went for a quick run outside her south city home. When she came back, she noticed her shoes had been moved to a different spot and her cell phone was gone. 

From there, she used Find My iPhone to search for it. The location said it was on her property grid. She used her work phone to call it.

“I open my back door to call it and I hear it in my neighbor’s backyard behind me,” Clarke said.

Another neighbor yelled out to her and said, “Hey, I told him, ‘I know you did this and I’m calling the police!'”

Clarke said that’s when the 6-foot teen jumped the fence and tackled her.

“I am on the phone with St. Louis police dispatch, making my way to my backdoor, when he comes back with a weapon. He is on top of me. There was blood everywhere. I was literally fighting for my life at that point,” she told 5 On Your Side.

Clarke said as he was on her back, he stabbed her in the head and face with a metal rod.

This is the aftermath:

She’s lucky that she didn’t suffer a skull fracture when she was hit in the head with a metal object.

Again, she’s very lucky, she could have lost an eye.

The teenager that attacked her reportedly has an IQ of 49.  The charges were dropped and he was released on the grounds that he was incompetent to stand trial.

This is not supposed to be a “get out of jail free” card.  There is supposed to be a system in place that prevents this from happening again with social workers and alike.  That system isn’t working and this teenager is causing all sorts of problems.

Another neighbor who didn’t want to go on camera said the teen has also broken into her home and believes he needs to be held accountable.

Clarke said the teen has broken into her car three times, but this has been the worst of it.

The sister of the victim made a lengthy Facebook post about the incident.

This is my sister. On Monday night she was attacked by her 15 year old neighbor. He stabbed her in the head and face with a screw driver. She fought him off and was able to escape to a neighbors house to call the police. The boy was taken into police custody and brought to juvenile detention center. No clear motive was ever established.

Alicia has a broken nose, staples in her head and stitches to the puncture wound under her eye.

Hassan is a 15 year old refugee from Somalia who lives with his family. He is 6’ and approx 175lbs, much larger than my sister. He has broken into Alicia’s car 3 different times and broken into another neighbors house. The police were involved every single time and reported that nothing could be done since he was a minor. Surely this time would be different, though.

This morning we went to the juvenile courts building for the deposition hearing where we would find out if he would be held in custody while he awaits his court date, or if he would be allowed to return home. It had been explained to alicia by the victims advocate that the 3 charges he was facing each independently carry a strong recommendation of remaining detained; all three compiled was almost a sure thing. We arrived feeling very hopeful.

On arrival, we learned from that same patient advocate that Hassan’s IQ is 49. This makes him incompetent to aid in his own defense, therefore all charges were formally dismissed by the prosecutor, Sakina Ahmad. We never entered a courtroom, saw a judge, nothing. Hassan was able to go home with a family member. He likely left the building as a free person before we even learned all the above information.

The prosecutor sympathized with our frustration and explained that because he is a mentally handicapped, juvenile refugee, every safeguard available is to his benefit and to Alicia’s detriment. She went on to tell us, VERBATIM, that even if alicia had been KILLED, the outcome would be the same and that this case would be dismissed. Now, Go ahead and read that last sentence again.

Right!!!

She said the best option for Alicia’s safety is to get a restraining order. Luckily for us, alicia initiated that process the day after the attack. When asked what would happen if he violates the protection order, she explained the following scenario:

1. Call the police
2. He will be taken into custody
3. He will be released promptly and the cycle will perpetuate

Thank God Alicia has a solid support system so she isn’t forced to live next door to her attacker and wait for the next assault.

Don’t worry, we’re not done.
#wearentdone

It was also reported on Facebook that the victim has both gotten a dog for protection and is applying for her concealed carry permit.

This is where everything turns to shit.

Missouri is a Stand Your Ground state.  The victim has a restraining order against her attacker.

That is the good news for her.

The person she is primarily wanting to defend herself against is a 15-year-old, mentally handicap, black, Muslim, immigrant child, who has already been established by the courts to be incompetent in his own defense.

That’s the bad news for her.

You can hear the lamentations already: “why did she have to shoot him, he didn’t know what he was doing?”

I can just about guarantee that a prosecutor will try to use some version of this argument to try to step around SYG and possibly try to push “revenge” as a motive for the shooting.

Even if this woman isn’t convicted in court, given the intersectional lottery winner status of her attacker, she will be destroyed in the pop culture.

The state needs to take this seriously before this situation ends up going to hell in a freight elevator.

From the Montgomery Advertiser:

Suspected home invader critical after Elmore homeowner shoots him 4 times

Charles Virgil Bowne, 39, of Elmore County, was shot once in the head, shoulder, bicep and left leg, said Sheriff Bill Franklin. Bowne was taken by helicopter to a Montgomery hospital with life-threatening wounds, the sheriff said.

The incident occurred about 4:45 a.m. Monday in a home on Clemons Road in the Flatwood community.

Nothing good happens after midnight, “good time” resets at 6:00 a.m.

This is the statement from Sheriff Bill Franklin:

“I got a young couple in their 20s; daddy, momma and a young child at home when daddy hears a commotion in the front of the house,” Franklin said. “He arms himself with a 9 mm handgun and goes to investigate. He sees Mr. Bowne standing in the living room and Mr. Bowne tells him ‘Give me you (stuff).’ Mr. Bowne then makes a move like he’s going into his front pocket and the homeowner fires several times.

“There was evidence of forced entry into the home. We searched Mr. Bowne and didn’t find a weapon, but we did find a crack pipe tucked into his sock.”

Seems like a good shoot to me.

To add to the orgy of evidence that this was a good shoot, Bowne had broken into another home at 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

“Mr. Bowne was lucky he wasn’t shot Sunday morning.”

More words of wisdom from a down-home country Sheriff.

The homeowner was not charged by police.  The law requires that the shooting goes to a grand jury, but the Sheriff believes they will not return an indictment.

If I know anything about Alabama, you can put money on that.

“A crackhead breaking into a house on Sunday and gets runoff.  Then does it again Monday and gets shot.  Good thing that man shot him before he broke into my house and I’d have to shoot him.  No charge.”

The letter relates the city’s mandatory quarantine rules as China struggles to bring Covid-19 under control. When the virus runs rampant and hospitals are overrun, as in Wuhan in Hubei Province, the Case Fatality Rate soars to over 15%, according to many accounts.

Under the current quarantine rules strictly enforced in Chengdu and other cities, the CFR can be kept to below 2%, but only at the cost of crippling the economy.

Now, just imagine trying to enforce this level of quarantine in American cities. God help us as Covid-19 spreads.

CHINESE COVID-19 QUARANTINE RULES

There is a 20 rules/points list in the post. go read it.

Mortality rates will be high depending on the level of care and common sense. Korea has the most affected outside China and only a 0.5% mortality rate.
Italy with 1128 cases was up to 29 deaths fo a 2.57%
Iran screws the international  pooch with 593 cases reported and 43 deaths for a 7.25% mortality rate.

As for preparing for the virus itself . . . it’s a virus.  There’s no need to get hysterical about it.  We have experience of something similar every year.  It’s called the common cold!  COVID-19 appears to be more infectious than most of its ilk, but for the vast majority of those who catch it, it appears to produce temporary discomfort rather than a life-threatening condition.  Those most at risk are those with pre-existing conditions that can be made worse by the new infection.  If you suffer from (or have in the past suffered from) coronary or lung problems (former smoker, asthma, COPD, previous infections with severe bronchitis or pneumonia, etc.), or you’re over 60, you’re in a higher-risk group.  As such, take more precautions, and stock up on the same over-the-counter medications you use to deal with the yearly sniffles.  They’ll probably help most of us get through COVID-19 as well.  (I’d also recommend a pneumonia immunization shot, because a severe infection with COVID-19 may lead to that.)

COVID-19: Time for a dose of realism  – Bayou Renaissance Man

As of now and using only the numbers coming out of China and not the more civilized countries, if you catch the Cheap Beer Virus you have a 95.6% of staying alive.

Go read what Peter has to say about this latest madness. Makes a lot of sense.

This is not something very common down here or at least does not go advertised in Regular Media. I am not saying Miami Dade will suddenly turn red come election day, but I believe a lot of votes are not going Democrat.

Hat Tip Alex M.