VISION

 

Big or small, telling “little” white lies during an election year should be avoided, unless of course you are Donald Trump, when everyone becomes so used to hearing lies every time you open your stupid mouth that they don’t even care anymore. It just seems like a waste of time fact-checking Trump, so it’s the next person in line before the partisan political firing squad. Republicans, for example, are jumping all over the claim that Tim Walz bore arms against the “enemy.” Walz was in the National Guard for 24 years, retired and ran for Congress. Let’s see: run for Congress or wait for his unit to be unexpectedly deployed overseas. It’s nothing to be “ashamed”—or fib about. I mean, do we have to compare his service with Trump’s “war record” again?

Of course you could be J.D. Vance, who went by the name of Hamel as an enlisted man in the Marines, the name of his stepfather, until he decided after college that he liked the sound of “Vance” better, the name of his grandmother. No, he didn’t “lie” about his “service” as a public relations “correspondent” in the Marines, where records showed two-count-them-two stories written under his by-line and maybe took a few pictures. He may have only encountered a few incidental “dangers” on occasion during his 6 months in Iraq that actual combat soldiers faced daily which he didn’t “lie” about (or rather, didn’t mention), but when questioned on CNN, Vance made himself available to lie about Trump’s lies about the true nature of his draft deferments.

Myself, I gave the Regular Army seven years, four of them in West Germany, just another number that Ronald Reagan could add to the roster to “win” for him Cold War I. I did see “enemy” soldiers while bearing arms, once. That was the time my platoon went on a sight-seeing tour of the East German border, where we saw armed East German soldiers holding forth on watch towers, admittedly looking like they’d rather be somewhere else. There was a second time I bore arms that was a little more interesting, even if I didn’t see any “enemy”; the GSR unit needed another “body” to fill-in the gap on the Czech border, so I was “volunteered” and spent a couple weeks in some wooded area with night vision goggles and listening to the crickets with high-tech sound gear. Just for “fun” I walked through the line of concrete poles that supposedly marked the border, to the Czech side. I doubt there was anyone on that side who saw me, or cared.

But it was all for naught, because one side did not have a “vision” for a future of peaceful coexistence. Although the wall was torn down and the Warsaw Pact collapsed, and the Soviet Union splintered, the Cold War just went into temporary hibernation. Putin was a former KGB and FSB operative, so he naturally viewed the West in adversarial terms, and still knew the tricks of trade for killing political enemies. But Putin’s attempts to recreate the Soviet Empire will likely backfire, no matter how the current war ends. We are told that the Ukraine War is not only reducing the number of Russian men, but Russians are fleeing the country to avoid being drafted into the war. The Atlantic Council reports that by 2100, Russia will likely have not just significantly fewer people than today, but the majority who are left will be non-ethnic Russians.

Anyways, the word of the week is VISION and one definition is as follows: the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom. Unfortunately, too often today “vision” has less to do with “imagination” or “wisdom” to construct something useful for future generations, but wild ideas about how to make money without the proper tools or know-how; I mean, just ask Elizabeth Holmes.

Thus we see not a “vision” conceived with “wisdom,” but a “fad” in this country in building vast multi-acre “greenhouse" farms which are either “vertical”—meaning largely computerized and mechanized—or “horizontal,” more “conventionally”-staffed with “farm workers.” Vance was an investor and former board member in one of the latter types, a company called AppHarvest, which recently applied for bankruptcy protection. This company was supposed to bring jobs to white eastern Kentucky Appalachian folk, as boasted by Republican politicians like Mitch McConnell, and a “real world” example of Vance creating jobs for “real Americans” in the heart of white country (not to worry, Kentucky has voted for the Republican candidate for president 13 times in the past 17 elections, including the past 6).

It’s a gag, of course, and it only played well until those white Appalachian workers started keeling over, according to a CNN story just in. The white folk were initially allowed to work at their own pace, take breaks when they wanted them, and just have a swell time with good benefits, but then things “changed”:

Production fell behind and workers got the message that they needed to pick up the pace, Morgan said. The company cut costs, including the employer-paid health care benefits, and managers were tasked with meeting far higher production quotas. That meant longer hours for workers and fewer breaks in the brutal heat of the greenhouse.

“I think about the hottest that I experienced was around 128 degrees,” Morgan said. “A couple days a week, you’d have an ambulance show up and you see people leaving on gurneys to go to the hospital.”

The conditions became intolerable, and employees began to leave the company in droves, several workers told CNN. Morgan helped organize an employee sit-in to demand fairer working conditions, and said that he was fired after he took time off for medical care for an injury he said he suffered on the job.

Of course APPHarvest found itself losing money hand-over-fist; unlike vertical farms which are failing because of massive, unsustainable power usage, at horizontal farms it’s the “human” cost that is the “problem.” Workers weren’t working because of complaints about “heat-related illnesses” and “regular access to fresh drinking water, rest breaks and opportunities to escape high temperatures.” Oh poor babies. Remember last April when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill preventing local governments from mandating heat and water breaks for “outdoor workers”—no doubt meant to discomfit Hispanic migrant farm workers?

Well, it appears that after so many “real” white Americans quit working at AppHarvest either before or after they were hauled out on gurneys, they were replaced by “contract workers” from Mexico and Guatemala—you know, the people who usually do this kind of work in this country and are supposed to be used to being abused and more “immune” from heat stroke? The CNN video report is by an Asian reporter who does her best to appeal to the bigotry of white folk against those pesky “Mexicans,” none of whom were human enough for her to talk to about their own view of things; maybe they will say white folks are “lazy” and complain too much for this kind of work.

But surely when we talk about space exploration, there is “vision” because no one wants send anyone out there unsafely:

 

 

You’d think that by the way some in the media are reporting it, Sunita Williams is out there floating around all by herself, and you’d never know that she not only has a “partner” in space, but she is currently aboard the International Space Station with him and a previous crew of 7 already aboard who will be there longer than they have been. Frank Rubio’s 371 days was the longest continuous mission out in space by an American astronaut, so if there is real danger in spending too much time in space, surely we’d have known about it by now. 

So what is the problem? It appears that the Starliner capsule encountered issues with the thrusters (5 of 28 failed during docking) and four helium leaks; helium is used to “push” propellants into the thrusters, which may be why they failed. So far, 27 of the 28 thrusters are believed to be “ready,” but the helium leaks is another issue altogether. Boeing managers have stated that they believe that the Starliner is safe to return the astronauts to Earth, but NASA officials are having cold feet. The SpaceX Dragon is slated to bring additional crew and supplies to the ISS in September and to remain docked until February; in the meantime it is awaiting a request from NASA to leave with two less passengers to make room for Williams and Barry Whitmore.

One former astronaut suggests that Boeing’s own “confidence” in the Starliner returning safely should be seen as a “positive” since commercial companies generally prefer to be more “careful” to avoid disasters that might end a program like this. Of course in the “old days,” NASA would take its chances and operate the spacecraft as is and astronauts accepted the risks, but in this day and age losing lives is bad public relations, especially after the Challenger and Columbia disasters were in part due to the “human failure” of taking one’s chances in allowing the operation of spacecraft in unsafe conditions (the Challenger) or after sustaining seemingly “minor” damage (the Columbia).

Unfortunately for Boeing, its reputation has taken some major hits with problems in its commercial aircraft business, and the Starliner issue is just another PR stain. NASA awarded Boeing the Starliner contract in 2014, given its previous experience in the space business. That “experience” seemed to be sorely lacking, especially taking into consideration the fact that the Boeing Space Center in Kent went from this…

 

…to that little building with the “12” peeking out behind the dozens of new industrial warehouses which is about all that is left of it…

 

Of course it isn’t necessarily all Boeing’s fault, since the federal government isn’t throwing money at NASA as they had in the past, and the public imagination isn’t really “into it” anymore. After Nixon ended the Apollo program, tens of thousands of engineers with the “expertise” were lost along with their knowledge of how to get back to the moon. While the plans for the Saturn rocket still exist, neither the capability, the material or the money is there to “rebuild” it or something like it. The lack of money means that NASA needs craft that is “reusable,” and that takes a bit more “know-how” to do.

The Starliner, unlike the Apollo space capsule, is meant to be reusable, so its “parts” needed to be more durable and reliable for future use, especially given that unlike the “moonshot” Orion capsule built by Lockheed Martin, its function is limited to being a ferry for passengers to and from the ISS. Unfortunately, it suffered numerous software and hardware “glitches”; during its first unmanned test flight in 2019, according to the New York Times, and it failed to reach the ISS due to “The spacecraft’s clock was set to the wrong time, making Starliner think it was in the wrong location. The capsule fired its thrusters to try to get to where it thought it should be. At the same time, a communications glitch thwarted efforts by flight controllers at mission control to diagnose and fix the problem.” So much for “expertise” if one can’t even tell time.

A seemingly unfixable valve problem helped delay the subsequent test flights for almost 3 more years, and then in May 2022 the unmanned Starliner managed to dock with the ISS and returned seemingly uninjured back to Earth. But the “parts” were not as “durable” or “reliable” as hoped—this including the parachute and its harnesses, which could be dangerous for astronauts if they failed—as happened to Soviet cosmonaut Vladmir Komaroz..

 

…when the parachute failed during the reentry of his Soyuz capsule in 1967. A crewed launch set for 2023 was delayed for numerous reasons, and then a May launch date this year was scrubbed because of an oxygen valve leak, and then another one after a helium leak was discovered. That one leak was considered inconsequential, but in hindsight it should have been looked at more closely, since if it affected a component on one of the thrusters that controlled movement in earth orbit, such as maneuvering the capsule in position to re-enter the atmosphere, others could have the same “defect,” which apparently did happen.

But the June 1 launch was scrubbed because of other reasons, like more computer glitches, and when “liftoff” finally occurred on June 5, the thruster failures likely due to more helium leaks nearly derailed the attempt to dock with the ISS. While Boeing insists that the issues preventing a return journey to Earth are largely “fixed,”  in this day and age that is “risk-averse,”  NASA is not willing to commit to a return journey unless they are absolutely “certain” that there will be no “danger,” and more than two months on  and a “million” of tests later, if they cannot “guarantee” a safe return for the astronauts since they cannot figure out “exactly” what the is causing the thruster problems, it’s a no-go, although at some point between now and the next Dragon mission in a month the Starliner will have to undock and return to Earth, with or without passengers.

Whatever happens, this is still a public relations problem for Boeing, and of course it’s not just about the Starliner, but its commercial aircraft business, particularly in regard to both the 787 but the 737-Max especially. So what happened?  It began when Boeing decided that paying experienced union employees in the state of Washington was not “cost effective.” It has had to learn the hard way that this was the wrong “strategy” if the idea was to “save money” and “increase profits.”  Boeing first decided to outsource production of the 787 Dreamliner, which during the whole time I was working at SeaTac Airport (7 years) I only saw one being flown by an airline there, JAL. This is what Industry Week tells us after the most recent 737-Max “issue” with an Alaska Airlines plane losing a door in flight:

The development of the 787 Dreamliner was a challenging period for Boeing. The company aimed to develop the aircraft quickly and inexpensively to compete with the Airbus A380. Instead of developing the aircraft in-house and sourcing parts from suppliers, however, Boeing decided to outsource 70 percent of the design, engineering and manufacturing of entire modules to over 50 strategic partners. These partners, in turn, could outsource various parts to their suppliers.

However, Boeing failed to establish the close supplier relationships that took Toyota decades of effort and commitment to develop. Without close communication and coordination among the partners, Boeing was unable to manage its external development process effectively. As a result, the 787 development program, initially budgeted at $5.5 billion and scheduled for 5 years, ended up being three years late and costing over $32 billion.

Aside from the cost and time overruns, there are ongoing safety concerns with the 787 about the epoxy tape used to connect the wings and the middle-fuselage, and the inspection and maintenance of the 787’s composite structure. 

A 2019 story in Bloomberg tells us that no lessons were learned from the 787, especially with the construction of the 737-Max with work being done by low-paid and improperly-trained and overseen workers in Red-Right Republican “right-to-work” states and foreign countries far from the Everett plant in Washington; today, a union janitor in Seattle makes more money and has better benefits than a non-union airplane assembler at Boeing’s South Carolina facility. Even the computer programming part of the work was apparently overseen by the lower-skilled in that department:

It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.

The Max softwareーplagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flawーwas developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospaceーnotably India.

And you thought that people from India are supposed to be so much smarter than the rest of us—just like East Asians “used” to.

In offices across from Seattle’s Boeing Field, recent college graduates employed by the Indian software developer HCL Technologies Ltd. occupied several rows of desks, said Mark Rabin, a former Boeing software engineer who worked in a flight-test group that supported the Max.

The coders from HCL were typically designing to specifications set by Boeing. Still, “it was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code,” Rabin said. Frequently, he recalled, “it took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”

Despite these concerns, “Based on resumes posted on social media, HCL engineers helped develop and test the Max’s flight-display software, while employees from another Indian company, Cyient Ltd., handled software for flight-test equipment.” Those of us dealing with Windows 11 know the frustration of its constant need of “updates” that sometimes cause more problems than “fixes,” such as at least for some of us includes constant “blue screens” caused by an “update” that affected the RealTek network adaptor. On Reddit you find discussions about how in the Indian “computing culture” at Microsoft, coders are regarded as the lowest workers in the food chain, and nobody wants to be a coder for long, leaving behind inexperienced coders to “fix” what the previous coders screwed-up.

Bloomberg notes that Boeing at first didn’t care that there could be quality control issues here, because India was promising big business for them, so it ignored or promoted this type of “quality control”:

In one post, an HCL employee summarized his duties with a reference to the now-infamous model, which started flight tests in January 2016: “Provided quick workaround to resolve production issue which resulted in not delaying flight test of 737-Max (delay in each flight test will cost very big amount for Boeing).”

Boeing of course claims that it did not rely on HCL engineers for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System after the failures linked to the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, for obvious reasons, although it didn’t offer any alternative “rationalization” for the failures that led to the crashes and loss of life. In order to better compete with Airbus, Bloomberg notes that

“Boeing was doing all kinds of things, everything you can imagine, to reduce cost, including moving work from Puget Sound, because we’d become very expensive here,” said Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing flight controls engineer laid off in 2017. “All that’s very understandable if you think of it from a business perspective. Slowly over time it appears that’s eroded the ability for Puget Sound designers to design.”

To keep planes from crashing because of software glitches or from endangering lives with blown doors should be a part of “good business sense,” but recent hearings about Boeing’s current quality control “culture” shows that it has little sense at all, and in regard to the 737-Max it largely did not carry out its “promises” to fix the problems (outside of “updating” pilot training on interpreting the MCAS), as shown that somehow assemblers and quality control at the Renton plant had somehow “missed” installing four bolts in the blown-off door in the most recent accident, which indicates that the “culture” is company-wide now.

Boeing has a new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, and he says that “quality control” is his top priority. We will see if that is more than mere words. That may mean that until Boeing’s current workforce becomes a little more “experienced,” those who have the responsibility for quality control are going to have to work a little harder than they have been in the recent past. Boeing certainly needs a new “vision” for its future, just as the country needs a new “vision” on how to keep from falling apart just to satisfy the juvenile fantasies of a cowardly bully who some people still think is “fit” to be president of this country.