[imglorp]

Head start? Boeing has 108 years of vast aerospace history and culture.

The mistakes on this project are well summarized by an Ars article this week, mostly coming down to the well known management issues plus an inability to operate in a fixed price procurement setting; everything about their organization depended on cost plus structures.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-th...

[elteto]

Horse breeders had millennia of accumulated history and culture at the end of the 19th century.

Boeing today is not the same Boeing of yesterday. All that history means nothing if you can’t execute now.

[ceejayoz]

SpaceX absolutely has a head-start now on reusability, launch costs, etc.

Boeing's century of experience was supposed to give them a head start on Commercial Crew; they squandered it, and recent history has the resulting gap getting bigger, not smaller.

[subsubzero]

exactly, I mean Boeing can't even make planes with doors that don't fall off in flight. I wouldn't look to Boeing for any engineering excellence in 2024.

[ethbr1]

They can obviously do that. They just can't do it fast enough or profitable enough to satisfy their managements' sales goals.

Profit, manufacturing speed, reliability: pick 2.