That’s how I look at what NASA centers should be.
Asset preservation has to mean more than money.

Our new mechanical engineer fresh out of collage had never even seen a machine shop let alone had experience working with any or our CNC machines. I had to teach this kid how to run a drill press.

Engineering schools used to make sure the students had some experience before they left school. Knew how to use the tools of their field.

That company now has a policy of rotating all of its senor staff and engineer’s between the different departments. So that if someone “quits” their job can be covered quickly. They are trying to extend this down to all the other employees. They are now rotating them every year or two.

Quality has dropped very fast. After 4 years they are starting to realize its not working very well.

“It could be that because Boeing took over the U.S. Government-owned Michoud facility outside of New Orleans well after the Lockheed Martin shut down the Shuttle External Tank (ET) production, that the general area lost a significant number of workers that had the skills needed for the SLS production.”

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=61329.msg2614585#msg2614585

That’s what happens when you lay folks off en masse–whether it is a Proxmire or a Stonecipher that does it.

Rocket tech is a national asset for its own sake..

If “Coastal Ron” as he calls himself is accurate–it shows how a government run facility that values tribal knowledge is better than a private outfit–especially if it is Boeing.

This right here is why I think MSFC and proper funding of it is a national security asset.

SLS as is outperforms Starship as is for the moment.

allow me to speculate …. Boeing is using a contractor workforce because otherwise the employee alternative would saddle the company with union work rules and high severance payments when the rocket program winds down. And the New Orleans location was chosen to satisfy Congressional demands that the work be performed in specific districts.

Bean counters–whether they be Boeing shareholders or libertarian zealots who want to kill national programs–have done enough damage.

It isn’t just DEI that has hurt aerospace…though that is part of it.

Boeing needs to finish things.

They are now expanding this experiment (the theory from collage professors) into the area of trained and skilled workers.

In highly specialized fields like aerospace experience counts. You lose a HUGE amount of (as they call it) tribal knowledge by switching people around. It takes years to master a skill and mastery is what is needed.

Seriously, this actually *should* be raising questions about the flight safety of the Block 1B SLS. Is anyone at NASA actually looking at that now? The OIG says that Boeing unqualified welders doing shoddy work to the tune of 70+ corrective actions caught by Defense Contracts Management Agency, which is only looking at contract violations. What build errors outside contract violations have and have not been caught by Boeing and NASA?

After all, it’s not like SLS had a great LOC risk assessment to begin with.

I sense something else going on–I just can’t prove it.

No hablo inglés! No hablo inglés!
https://t.ly/P2y6Z

You can quit wondering – it probably is. A friend told me that years ago another large aerospace company had developed a test to measure management potential in senior blue collar workers. They measured basic knowledge in finance, science, logical thinking, etc.

As a final test he says they administered the test to a group of workers, and to a control group of senior managers that they hoped to impress.

There was a decent rate of potential shown in the workers, but a majority of the senior managers whiffed! The program was shelved.

John: The missing space was likely my mistake in cutting and pasting from the pdf.

Nonetheless, you ask a good question, one that I have been asking myself in a number of essays in the past few years. See for example this Feburary essay: Have modern space engineers forgotten the importance of keeping things simple?

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not just a Boeing management problem. Lack of a trained and skilled workforce seems to be a recurring theme all around US industry. Maybe the country can’t produce trainable workforce anymore, or skilled tradesmen like welders.