[pacificmint]

> cost 3x the amount to develop

With cost plus contracts that’s unfortunately a feature and not a bug.

I think Boeing has just been unable to pivot to behaving differently for fixed price contracts, which is not surprising given corporate inertia.

[varjag]

The 787 was Boeing's own commercial project, what does it have to do with cost plus?

[wahern]

Fair point, but OTOH the 787 was financially engineered to put Boeing on the other side of fixed price contracting. If you're on the purchasing side of fixed price you can tell yourself you don't need experienced engineers, similar to when you're on the selling side of cost plus.

Plus, if you already have a little fiefdom of fixed price subcontractors, you can fool yourself into believing you can take fixed price contracts on novel work, passing the burden and risk onto subcontractors, taking a slice no matter what. And that's exactly what has happened with Starliner, right? AFAIU, these valves were designed and built by subcontractors. Boeing's biggest role seems to be project management, and maybe some assembly? Except now they're even failing at that.

[moralestapia]

Internal corruption.

My personal razor,

Do not attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by corruption.