Two Approaches

Abstract

Chris and Fred use the safe return of the Boeing Starliner … without the crew! What does this tell us about its safety and reliability?

Key Points

Join Chris and Fred as they discuss the recent incident involving the Boeing Starliner crew module that managed to get a crew to the International Space Station (ISS) but was not deemed safe enough to return them. But it has since ‘safely’ landed. So was it safe? Is it safe? What about reliability?

Topics include:

• Russian roulette is ‘safe.’ If by safe that means that there are outcomes with no undesirable outcomes. Russian roulette (depending on who you ask) involves a single bullet being placed in the cylinder of a revolver (gun). The cylinder can hold six bullets. The cylinder is then spun so that there is a one in six chance that a bullet will be fired when the trigger is pulled. So there is a five in six chance that no bullet will be fire when you pull the trigger. So does this mean that Russian roulette is safe five times out of six and unsafe the other time? NO! It is always unsafe because it is all about the PROBABILITY of something bad happening.
• Is Boeing ‘safe’? No. NASA’s Inspector General has been very critical of Boeing’s ability to safely, efficiently and effectively develop spacecraft. Issues include not having enough people, not having enough of these people appropriately trained, not responding to corrective action requests from NASA and LOTS of others. Why? Well, while Boeing does have a history of space exploration dating back to the Apollo program, that history is dated. And no longer relevant. So Boeing won contracts from NASA to build spacecraft and THEN tried to create a team to build it. Compare that with SpaceX, which is much younger, but was established with the unambiguous goal of creating all manner of spacecraft before NASA came along offering contracts. So SpaceX built it’s own workforce, worked out its own development processes, put its own skin in the game by building its own spacecraft before signing contracts from customers like NASA, tested to learn and not testing to pass and so on. So this is why SpaceX spacecraft will now return Boeing’s stranded crew back to Earth.
• Organizations hunting for money are destroyed by organizations that have found their purpose. General Motors famously developed an electric vehicle ages ago, until it was killed off because it wasn’t making money straight away. If General Motors was able to go back in time … it would almost certainly reconsider! If they had maintained their electric vehicle program they would potentially be a market leader today (which they are not … they are just a ‘player’) noting that groups of countries are starting to only allow electric vehicles on the road.
• So what do you do? Does your organization only judge success based on immediate returns? Meaning that everyone is hunting profits by week? This means there is no long-term vision which means you meander your way to obsolescence. It is those companies that stick with their long-term vision through highs and lows. Amazon took decades to create a meaningful profit … but it is kind of a big deal now!

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.

Show Notes

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