Their dreams of airframe construction, weight, and cost are similarly amusing to those of us in that arena as well.

Why mess around with Mach 1 or 2? We just need to capture one of those "TicTacs" caught in the F-18 FLIR imaging, reverse engineer it, and go lickety split.

I’m usually in the skeptics corner, but I toured their new facility with a friend of a friend, and it was impressive. The most impressive part was their funding, which is where all of these projects really fail.

I don’t know if they’ll be successful or not, but I do think this thing will fly.

I also used to be a skeptic of the 5 million human sized drone startups, but again, they have the money and whether they are successful or not some of those will be certified and fly passengers. I’m so used to seeing 50 year old airplanes that at best have a new paint job and avionics it’s almost unsettling to see one of those things on a ramp.

Building a facility is easy, though, especially if a municipality will do it for you, or provide a ton of incentives...

Funding is vital as you mentioned, and a project cannot succeed without it, but physics also causes projects to fail.

If anyone told me that some dude will start a company that only makes and sells electric cars that can beat a Lamborghini and Ferrari, then he will make it past the dealers lobbyists and operate, then he will launch internet satellites into space, then he will resupply the space station, then he will buy a $44B non-profit social media company, and he would smoke illegal drugs on national tv, I would have looked at you like you had a third arm growing out of your head.

It's ok. That $44B company has recently lost all it's users, so all is right again

It's ok. That $44B company has recently lost all it's users, so all is right again

Meanwhile SpaceX has basically cornered the market on orbital heavy lift.

Russians lost all their contracts with the war.

Europe shot its last Arianne 5 and Arianne 6 is still months if not years away.

ULA can't seem to launch more than a handful of rockets a year. They just stopped making the Delta IV Heavy, and only have one more launch and they are done.

Boeing can't build a capsule worth a damn for twice the money SpaceX got.

NASA SLS rocket is $2B a shot and uses left over shuttle engines.

Everybody is switching to Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy. The price is cheap and the reliability is stellar (ha!).

By the time anybody else has any reusability, SpaceX will be using Starship and once again lower the $/kg level for orbit.

The space launch business has radically changed in just a few years. The dinosaurs are gong extinct.

Mike C.

Minor thread drift... Does anyone have a better guess as to what that recording really shows. It just seems too steady to be real to me, unless it is on the sensor...

Meanwhile SpaceX has basically cornered the market on orbital heavy lift.

Russians lost all their contracts with the war.

Europe shot its last Arianne 5 and Arianne 6 is still months if not years away.

ULA can't seem to launch more than a handful of rockets a year. They just stopped making the Delta IV Heavy, and only have one more launch and they are done.

Boeing can't build a capsule worth a damn for twice the money SpaceX got.

NASA SLS rocket is $2B a shot and uses left over shuttle engines.

Everybody is switching to Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy. The price is cheap and the reliability is stellar (ha!).

By the time anybody else has any reusability, SpaceX will be using Starship and once again lower the $/kg level for orbit.

The space launch business has radically changed in just a few years. The dinosaurs are gong extinct.

Mike C.

Too much installed base for that to happen that quickly, but I do see eroding market share.

When they moved HQ to Chicago, you knew they had lost their way in the commercial aircraft business.

There's a chance they stop fracking around and put some real leaders in charge and get this figured out. Boeing is not the kind of business where the board of directors can only be concerned about the next quarter results. The company needs a long view strategy and execute it well.

Mike C.

Too much installed base for that to happen that quickly, but I do see eroding market share.

When they moved HQ to Chicago, you knew they had lost their way in the commercial aircraft business.

There's a chance they stop fracking around and put some real leaders in charge and get this figured out. Boeing is not the kind of business where the board of directors can only be concerned about the next quarter results. The company needs a long view strategy and execute it well.

Mike C.

I think your second to last sentence answers what their solution is... I fully expect them to get bailed out under "too big to fail" or "We can't lose this industry/expertise". It is a shame because they used to make amazing aircraft (and I would have loved to have worked there) but have clearly lost the plot.

That said, I really think that there is a market for supersonic transport targeted at the ultra-wealthy where time is more valuable than money. I'm a little surprised Gulfstream/Dassault/Bombardier hasn't gotten there yet.

That could be correct, but the biggest issue is by the time they get into the must-have-a-bailout stage, it will have been too late. With something as complex as airplane creation, it's not a matter of a simple cash infusion to keep the lights on when the real problem begins with the "brain drain" that happens when you go 20-30 years between new airplanes. The original 777 development was a real breakthrough IMO, and the whole "working together" philosophy espoused from the top down really did work on that plane. I hired in on the tail end of it so I got to see a little bit, but really saw great cooperation between engineering and operations/production supporting that product line. 787 was quite different with new technology and the offload-everything to "risk-sharing partners" philosophy, but I think it ended up with a good plane that had a lot of teething issues and financial hits. I missed the Max development but got to work on 777X. Boeing was completely different on 777X, with an un-earned institutional arrogance from their current very junior employees IMO that does not serve them well. We'll see if that plane is ever a success...so far they cannot get out of their own way to finish it. I don't know that they have any or many veterans from the 777 era (90-95 ish) and the certainly don't have any leaders from that program. Every one since then has been worse, so what happens if they go another 10-15 years without developing anything new?

Engineering knowledge is transferred by doing, and active mentorship. When there is little to do that requires innovation and problem-solving, the folks that are good at that will go find it elsewhere. Who will be left when it is time to do that again? By then it is too late for a traditional US bailout unless you can somehow entice all that experience to come back together? That won't ever happen. They need to be actively developing that new plane now to have a chance.

Boeing thought it would take $40 billion to make a new narrowbody airplane so instead they developed the Max, and spent the money on the stock buybacks.

Then the Max debacle cost them 20$B. So 60B later, and no new narrowbody. Just in time for the A321Neo XLR to completely own the category. It actually will own the 757 "long thin route" category, and the other A320s will eat the Max.

767 is out of commercial production. Boeing's answer was the 787-8. But it doesnt really work. Airbus has the A330 Neo for that.