James B. Meigs joins Jordan McGillis to discuss the issues that have been plaguing Boeing, from safety issues with commercial planes to the return of the Starliner space vehicle, and the future of American space programs.
Audio Transcript
Jordan McGillis: Welcome to 10 Blocks. I'm Jordan McGillis, economics editor of City Journal. On the show with me today is Jim Meigs. Jim was editor-in-chief for a decade at the esteemed magazine Popular Mechanics. Now he's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, or as I like to call him, science-nerd-in-residence. Thanks for joining us, Jim.
Jim Meigs: Great to be here.
Jordan McGillis: Okay, we're talking Boeing today, the troubled American aerospace giant. When most of us, myself included, think of Boeing. The first thing that comes to mind is the 737 that we all fly on and the troubles that the company is having there. We're going to talk about that a bit, and we're also going to get into the space side where Boeing is also struggling. Jim, very briefly, can you run us through where things stand with the 737 MAX and the various legal troubles that have surrounded Boeing on that topic?
Jim Meigs: Yeah. Boeing is just in a world of trouble in its commercial aviation division, and the problems go back quite a few years, but they really came to the fore in 2018 and 2019 when there were two crashes of 737 MAX Jets. The 737 MAX was an updated version of a venerable, mid-sized aircraft of theirs that, they wanted to add capacity to it. And that required changing the engine position, which made the airplane kind of tricky to fly. And they tried to fix it with a software correction that would kind of reinterpret the pilot inputs, but it behaved in squirrely ways that pilots weren't properly trained on. And tragically it led to two devastating accidents. And in the course of investigating those in the lawsuits and everything else, we've learned a lot more about some, what I would call just engineering culture or dysfunctional engineering culture at the company that affects a lot more than just the 737 MAX.
Jordan McGillis: Can you distinguish between the way that Boeing operates on the engineering side and its rival Airbus operates? Airbus seems to be really shining as the star in the industry at this time.
Jim Meigs: Well, it's really interesting. Because 15 years ago I would've said I would have more confidence in Boeing to be a more innovative, more engineering-driven company. Whereas Airbus began as kind of a Euro conglomerate. You would think on paper they would build planes that are kind of built by committee. But in fact, their planes have performed beautifully and are... Today, I think a lot of frequent air passengers prefer flying on Airbus aircraft. Boeing and Airbus are really the only two significant vendors, global vendors of large civilian aircraft. And so Boeing's not going to go away anytime soon, but the problems they're having are just looming so large, especially when it comes to safety. It's one thing to say that a company's aircraft aren't as profitable as they might be, or they're too expensive. It's another thing to worry that they're simply not safe. And once the public starts focusing on safety issues, then everything that happens becomes a major international story.
And we've seen more things come out. More recently, in 2021, another 737 MAX had a door plug blow out. It's basically a place where on the original version of the airplane, they would've had a door, and then they plugged that up. Well, that plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines plane. No one was hurt, but it was terrifying. And now, just more recently, there have been reports from a whistleblower of all kinds of manufacturing flaws with their 787 Dreamliner, which is kind of their premier aircraft at the moment. So they've been dragged through various congressional hearings, and the whole situation is really ugly for the company.
Jordan McGillis: Something that detractors from free market capitalism point to is that aspect of Airbus, that it was formed as sort of a agglomeration of governmental bodies coming together from across countries in Europe in a very state-directed way. And then those detractors from capitalism will hold up Boeing as an example of capitalism failing. I suspect though that there's a significant aspect of regulatory capture and government involvement in Boeing. I'm not an expert in this field. But because of, as you point out there being so few challengers, it seems like the company has become moribund as it's become more entwined with the state. But perhaps I'm-
Jim Meigs: That would be a great avenue for someone to, that would make a great PhD thesis for somebody, probably. I think you're right about that. I hardly think you would look at Boeing, one of the major aerospace defense contractors, NASA contractors, a company that's been working very, very closely with the government for almost its entire existence. I would hardly see that as an example of just pure free market capitalism. If you just look at their record with the Export-Import Bank, for some reason, our country chooses to subsidize the exports, the export of Boeing aircraft in all kinds of ways. So they're very, very tied up with government regulation, with Congress. Their lobbying power is enormous, and companies in a free market, the free market doesn't guarantee that companies are always going to run well or always going to be with us. It just guarantees that companies that don't do a good job will eventually find competition.
Jordan McGillis: Can you explain the different verticals within Boeing? You mentioned defense. There's of course the standard planes that are in commercial circulation, and then there's space. How do all of these things relate? Are they completely separate business entities?
Jim Meigs: That's a good question. I don't have the corporate chart in front of me. I do believe these are set up as separate verticals, but there is a strong sense that some of the cultural problems at Boeing are common to the different divisions. And a lot of those things date back to the 1990s when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, which itself was a merger of two major aircraft builders that built the famous DC-10 aircraft and others. By the late nineties, that business was fading. Boeing was very, very dominant. And yet when the companies merged, in a lot of ways, the culture from McDonnell Douglas became predominant within Boeing. And that culture is widely considered to be a kind of cost-cutting green eye shade mentality. Rather than the kind of pure engineering, maybe this is being romanticized, but more visionary quality that Boeing traditionally had.
I mean, after all, Boeing was the company that came up with the first commercially successful commercial jet, the 707 in the early sixties. They designed the revolutionary 747, and so on. So this idea that they would allow themselves to be dominated by a mentality that was focused more on keeping existing planes updated and flying and selling rather than visionary, bold new designs, that's really disappointing. But that's within the industry that's a widely held belief.
Jordan McGillis: Well, speaking of visionaries, Boeing is in competition with Elon Musk's SpaceX. Competing for NASA contracts and developing technology that's going to help facilitate human space exploration. Can you explain where Boeing sits in that competition and the troubles it's having with its Starliner?
Jim Meigs: Yeah. Yeah. So I think everybody this summer was aware that a new Boeing space vehicle, basically a large space capsule kind of like the Apollo capsule, made its first crewed flight to this International Space Station back in June. The crew, the two crew members were supposed to stay for about a week and come back. But they discovered all kinds of problems with the vehicle, and it basically got stuck there. They finally flew the vehicle itself back without the astronauts just a few days ago. But the astronauts are going to be stuck up there until, looks now like until February. Until they can come back on a scheduled mission flying on one of Elon Musk's Dragon space capsules. The background to all of this is a really interesting story. Boeing has been a major contractor for NASA from the beginning. They helped build Apollo and the space shuttle, and they did a lot of the work to designing and building the International Space Station.
But all of that work was done in the traditional way where NASA comes up with a design and then they contract a company like Boeing to execute the design. But if costs go over the design changes, if there's delays and stuff, Boeing's not responsible for those. It's what's called a cost plus contract. You won't be surprised to hear. That's also the way a lot of our military hardware is built, which is one reason it tends to run so far over budget. So for decades, this was a very comfortable relationship, very close relationships between NASA managers and engineers and the aerospace team at Boeing. But around when the retirement of the space shuttle was looming in the aughts, NASA decided they needed a new approach. And they wanted to come up with what they call a commercial crew program that would basically, instead of having private contractors build rockets and space capsules for NASA that NASA would own and fly, they would come up with a contract with companies to build space hardware that the company itself would own and fly under NASA's very close supervision.
And this was seen as a way to save money, harness the power of competition, the free market. And one of the first companies that jumped on this was SpaceX, initially in a program just to fly cargo to the International Space Station. And that worked so well that then NASA pivoted and opened it up to helping these companies develop spacecraft that would fly humans. So when this program started, I believe in 2014, the human, what they call the commercial crew program, everybody thought Boeing would just crush it. That Boeing would be by far the dominant player. In fact, a lot of people were surprised and some people were really upset that NASA also gave a contract to SpaceX to build its own human-rated space capsule. And you can see how much NASA expected Boeing to be the dominant player. They gave Boeing a grant of $4.2 billion. SpaceX only got $2.6.
That money was meant to cover both the development of the space hardware and some of the first missions that would be flown using that hardware. Well, fast-forward a few years, Boeing just had one problem after another developing their space vehicle, now called the Starliner. Meanwhile, SpaceX completely redesigned their Dragon capsule. It's now called the Crew Dragon and started flying missions to the International Space Station in 2020. They've flown more than half a dozen missions so far. This platform has performed beautifully, reliably, for the most part, while Boeing has just limped along with delay after delay, problem after problem. All culminating in this just incredibly embarrassing faceplant over the last few months, where the company was receiving global attention for the fact that they had a severely out-of-spec spacecraft attached to the International Space Station that they weren't even sure was safe for the astronauts to fly home. And in the end, they decided it wasn't safe. Or they couldn't guarantee that it was safe enough for the astronauts to fly home. So that's where we are.
Jordan McGillis: What does the vehicle itself, the Starliner, look like? I have in mind like a space shuttle? Is it something that looks similar to that?
Jim Meigs: Nothing like a space shuttle. It looks more like a traditional Apollo capsule, a flattened cone with a rounded base. So it's able to do what they call a ballistic reentry. Basically, you aim the blunt side down as you come through the atmosphere. And as that heats up in the atmosphere that does most of the work of slowing down the capsule. And that's the way Mercury, Gemini, Apollo all worked. The space shuttle was considered an advance beyond that. They would build a reusable space vehicle that would then fly back to Earth and land on Earth. It was a brilliant idea, kind of ahead of its time, and turned out to be way too expensive and way too dangerous. But it involved some pretty impressive engineering. And ever since the space shuttle retired in 2011, NASA's been struggling to come up with a new system to fly astronauts into orbit.
And this is where SpaceX comes in. NASA has a separate program to build its own big Apollo-style space rocket to go back to the Moon. They're still, it's flown a couple of times, but has not flown with people. And that program is wildly over budget. So that's yet another approach. So it gets a little complicated, but we have the commercial program on one side, this is the one that SpaceX is dominating, that Boeing wanted to be part of. And those hopes now look very dubious. And then we have, NASA's also spending money on a traditional project where they design and hire contractors to build a large new space rocket they call the Space Launch System, SLS. That program is also really over budget. And I mean, it'll probably get there eventually, but it's got some problems. So it's a complex situation, but the bright spot in all of this is the really good performance of SpaceX. It's kind of saved NASA's bacon over recent years simply in allowing the agency to fly astronauts and cargo back and forth to the Space Station and keep that massive investment we have in the Space Station functional at least until 2030, when they're planning to retire it.
Jordan McGillis: So the two astronauts that are at the Space Station right now, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, they went up on the Starliner and they will come down, you're saying on the SpaceX vehicle when there's an opportunity for that.
Jim Meigs: That's right. Yeah. And the good news is Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, these are really experienced astronauts. I mean, Suni, most people pronounce her first name, "Sunny." Suni has spent more than a year of her life in space. She spent many, many hours on extravehicular activity. She helped build the International Space Station. And so these are very, very experienced pilots. I'm sure they're finding things to put them to work while they're up there as unexpected guests on the Space Station. But the fact that they couldn't fly home on the Boeing Starliner throws a wrench in the very complex logistics of planning what the crew rotations on the International Space Station. They were going to have a SpaceX Dragon bring up four new astronauts. I believe that mission was originally planned for about a month, about a month ago. That got delayed while they were trying to figure out, well, maybe we need to have room to bring these two astronauts, these basically test pilots back home.
So now, there were supposed to be four new astronauts coming to the Space Station. Now they've reduced that crew to just two. And so there's two astronauts who's been training for years for a Space Station mission, which they're now not getting, or it's being delayed. And then ultimately, I believe the way they're planning to do it is that Williams and Wilmore will fly home on that SpaceX Dragon craft when it returns this coming February with two other crew members. So the whole system of how they run the International Space Station is getting disrupted by these problems with the Boeing Starliner.
Jordan McGillis: What can you tell me about how other countries are progressing with their capsules and various vehicles for getting into space?
Jim Meigs: Yeah. Well, honestly, the US is just blowing everybody else away except China. So Russia of course, was the world's other leading space program, and their space agency Roscosmos was in many ways the technology leader, especially in terms of just being able to launch frequently and reliably on their venerable Soyuz spacecraft. They are, despite all these current tensions, they remain our partner in running the International Space Station. One of the astronauts who will go up on the next Dragon mission is a Russian cosmonaut. And there was a period after the space shuttle retired in 2011 when the only way to get American astronauts up to the Space Station was to fly them with the Russians on the Soyuz capsules launching out of the steppes south of Russia, in Kazakhstan.
So that obviously, from a political point of view, having to fly American astronauts on Russian rockets was very embarrassing. It also got to be very expensive. So when we were finally able to start turning to using the SpaceX rockets instead, that was a huge step forward both economically and politically. And in terms of national prestige. But Roscosmos is fading today. They're not able to develop new technology, and everything they build is what's called an expendable rocket system. That is, you basically build a giant rocket with expensive rocket motors, you put a capsule on top and everything that goes up just winds up getting ditched, burning up in the atmosphere, crashing into the ocean, except for the capsule on top. That's the only part of this huge expensive system that winds up coming back to Earth. So obviously that's a very expensive way to fly, and that's been the way that space has worked for generations. Going back to early 1960s.
What makes SpaceX so revolutionary is from the start, they were aiming to make their rockets mostly reusable. And a lot of people can remember seeing videos of them trying to land their first stage, the part with all the big engines in it, trying to land these first stages on barges out in the ocean. And they would come in, they would get close, they would crash, they would tip over. But classic SpaceX approach is just to keep trying and keep iterating. And pretty soon they were able to land these things and then refurbish them, refuel them, and launch them again in a short amount of time. So imagine if you had to build an airplane, fly it across the ocean, and then jump out of a parachute and just crash the airplane, what a flight to Europe would cost, compared to being able to fly an airplane that just gets refueled and can fly back again.
That's essentially what SpaceX has done. It's bringing the cost of spaceflight down by an order of magnitude. It's an absolute revolution in spaceflight, and nobody else in the world is close to achieving that on any kind of a regular basis. There's a French-European company, Arianespace, that for many years has been a major vendor for launching satellites and other space hardware. And they're still in business, but they can't really compete with SpaceX. So right now, if you designed a weather satellite, a spy satellite, a communication satellite, your number one choice to get that satellite into orbit would be SpaceX. And SpaceX makes a ton of money launching these satellites and other things for a whole range of customers, both the US military, NASA, lots of private communications companies and companies around the world. So that's been the secret that's allowed them to grow so fast is that they're very profitable at that part of their business. Everybody else around the world is struggling to catch up with that.
And then here in the US, we have a number of companies that are also working on this challenge, most notably Jeff Bezos. All the American billionaires want to be astronauts now. Which I think, given that they could spend their money on other things, I think it's kind of cool. So he's got this company Blue Origin, and they have a rocket they call the New Shepard, which began flying crewed missions back in 2021. That company's been around for 20 years. So a lot of people feel like, "Wow, what's taking them so long?" But they are getting there.
They also make a very reliable rocket engine that's becoming one of the standard engines that other rocket systems are using. And they also have a contract with NASA to be part of this upcoming effort to land cargo and astronauts again on the Moon. So Blue Origin shows a lot of promise, and there are people attempting to start private space... I mean, there are dozens and dozens of companies that are working on different aspects of what we expect to be this space economy here in the US and around the world. And then the one other big player is China, which is just pouring a ton of money. They're launching missions frequently. They're planning to get to the, they’ll probably get to the Moon and establish human habitation on the Moon before the US does, which from a geopolitical point of view is worrisome.
Jordan McGillis: That will be our next Sputnik moment.
Jim Meigs: I think so, and I think people really paying attention to some of what China's doing in space, it should be a kind of a Sputnik moment now. Especially since they've already shown a willingness to behave in a very hostile fashion in space. For example, some years back, more than, let's see, how many years ago? I forget how many years ago it was, they tested an anti-satellite mission. They just blew up an old defunct satellite and scattered space debris all over the place, causing great hazard to everyone else who operates in low Earth orbit. So they've shown a certain arrogance and aggressiveness with regard to their behavior and space that's really quite troublesome.
Jordan McGillis: How does the US Space Force factor into these issues?
Jim Meigs: Yeah, the US Space Force. At first, when I heard about Trump's idea for US Space Force, which really didn't originate with him, but that was when most people first heard about it. It was like, are we just doing that for show? Because it sounds cool? But a lot of people I talk to feel like, no, this is really important, and space will be a very significant frontier in future wars for better or worse. And we want to be prepared for that. We certainly know that Russia and China are happy to militarize space. We want to use our diplomatic influence and soft power where we can to keep people allied with us and to avoid the militarization of space. But we need to be ready. We need to have a presence, and especially we need to make sure that we do everything we can to have the best satellites and remote sensing equipment in orbit. So we know what's going on around the world and we're ready for what comes. And we've been moving pretty slowly in these areas. I think the Space Force is a positive development.
Jordan McGillis: What's the Space Force-NASA relationship?
Jim Meigs: That's a good question. I should probably report that for a future article, because I really don't know. I can't imagine the old timers at NASA are too thrilled about that. But a couple of real veterans that I've talked to have suggested that they've been impressed by how quickly the Space Force has moved ahead. And they think it will be playing an important role. And if you think about it, it frees up NASA from having to do things that might be seen as kind of quasi-militaristic. And that NASA certainly has... The space shuttle carried secret military payloads and stuff. And it liberates NASA from having to be part of that and allows us to focus those concerns in the military command structure where they probably belong.
Jordan McGillis: What kind of payloads did NASA carry?
Jim Meigs: Oh, good question. I think it was classified, I'd have to go back and look. Maybe, I'm not sure if it's still classified. But there were some classified space shuttle missions that I recall.
Jordan McGillis: Returning to the billionaire space tourism trend that was really hot about two, three years ago. Can you give me a sense of the distance, the scale where these flights, that Blue Origin and Richard Branson's... It's called Virgin Galactic, is that right?
Jim Meigs: Yeah, which is basically... Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines fame, and one of those colorful flamboyant billionaires who in some ways was one of the first to venture into this world. But his space ventures look like they're winding down. He wanted to start or did start a company to launch paying customers on short suborbital flights. So basically you take off on, you mentioned sort of a high arcing flight. Where at the top, the craft kind of arcs into a parabola, spends a few minutes in space and in a weightless environment, and then drifts back down to then reenter the atmosphere and return to Earth. And they did a bunch of flights, but they seem to be in some economic, they're facing some economic constraints. I think that company might be fading, whereas I mentioned that Bezos' plans, on the other hand, seem to be really picking up speed after a long period where people felt the development of his company was moving more slowly than people had anticipated.
Jordan McGillis: How far from the Earth, how many miles are these different orbit heights? Talking about Blue Origin and then the Space Station, and then can you put them in terms of how far away the Moon is for me, as well?
Jim Meigs: Okay. Let's see. So these are ballpark numbers that I don't have in front of me. The Space Station orbits at something like 150 miles up, I believe. So that's pretty, what we call low Earth orbit. Certainly plenty high enough to be out of the reach of the atmosphere, but pretty accessible. What's interesting is that, and that SpaceX right now has a privately funded mission going on called Polaris Dawn that just launched a couple of days ago. And they just, I believe, set a record for the highest, the highest manned orbital flight excepting the Apollo flights to the Moon that left Earth orbit. And I believe, again, top of the head, they're something like 850 miles up. So that's a very, very large orbit. And then they're going to bring that orbit back down to a more moderate elevation.
And then they're going to be conducting the first civilian spacewalk. And I think that's coming up in a day or two, if I'm not mistaken. And two of the four astronauts aboard are going to leave the capsule in these innovative SpaceX space suits and do what they call an EVA, extravehicular activity. Which Russian or Soviet and American astronauts have done since the sixties, but is a very high risk and tricky operation. What's interesting is, the guy who's paying for all this is another billionaire entrepreneur who has basically gotten himself trained as an astronaut along with a friend of his. And so this is an entirely privately funded mission, which to me suggests kind of a new frontier in space where some rich people... It's kind of like in the days of exploration in the 18th, 19th century... A lot of scientific voyages of discovery were privately funded by rich people who wanted to know what was on the Galapagos Islands or to collect samples from the world's undiscovered corners.
So now the same thing is happening in space. I think it's a good thing because a mission like this can test out technology, it can help build skills in terms of orbital flight. It's another challenge for the SpaceX Dragon platform that can prove its capabilities. And then down the road, if NASA wants to do some of those things, it can hire SpaceX to do them or hire Blue Origin to do things like that or other companies. So I'm optimistic that the coming era of space exploration will involve projects that don't have to be paid by the US taxpayer but will benefit Americans in general. By continuing our presence and dominance and space.
Jordan McGillis: From the perspective of the government or from the American taxpayers' perspective, what are the most important things that you would impress upon NASA? That it needs to emphasize and focus on as it cultivates these partners.
Jim Meigs: Yeah, so I am writing a paper for the Manhattan Institute right now that, it's been a little bit delayed as we sort out what's going on with Boeing and NASA. But I am actually coming up with some analysis and some recommendations for NASA and certainly not entirely on my own. I'm really channeling the thoughts of a lot of people who are much more expert than I am. But the real question is, can NASA afford to continue with its ambitious ideas about getting back to the Moon? And what we've seen really since the space shuttle era is that NASA tends to over-promise and under-deliver by telling Congress that these big projects are going to be more affordable than they really are. So the space shuttle wound up being wildly more expensive than Congress was led to believe, and it soaked up so much money that it prevented us from doing other things that we might've done at the same time.
Today, that SLS, Space Launch System, project that they're working on to get back to the Moon, it's probably not really necessary. They could probably hire, eventually they'll be able to hire the next generation of SpaceX aircraft to do the same thing much cheaper. But nonetheless, probably because Congress insists on building this really expensive space hardware, we are sinking tons of money into this program. That according to recent analysis, might cost as much as $4 billion per launch, per mission. Well, given that NASA's budget hovers somewhere in the $24 25-billion range per year, you can see they're not going to be able to... And a lot of that goes to all the other programs. We've got Mars Rovers, we've got deep space probes, we've got a million other things going on that are important. That is an unsustainable expense.
So how did we get in that position where we're spending too much money on one program, it's years behind schedule, and probably will never be able to achieve its goals? We need a better system than that. And I do think that this commercial crew model is the way to solve that problem. And believe me, a lot of the leaders in NASA think so, too. But NASA is often forced into spending more money on certain types of rockets and technology than they really want to by Congress. Because you've got all these senators and Congress people from various states where these things are built. And they tend to lock NASA in or try to lock NASA in. Even if these programs are inefficient and too expensive, it's a lot of money coming back to those districts. And that's been a problem that NASA has faced throughout its life, but certainly since the sixties. And we really need to find a solution to that.
And I do think that the big key will be continuing down this road of looking for commercial partners, where they take some of the risk and they can innovate and they can compete and really fight to bring down the costs of all these things. And when that happens, NASA will be able to achieve so much more without raising its budget, on its current budgets. It could do so much more if it could just hire more efficient vendors. That's also why the Boeing thing is such a big disappointment, because Boeing was supposed to be one of those vendors, and now that's looking very dubious.
Jordan McGillis: Today's 10 Blocks guest has been Jim Meigs. Jim, thank you very much for your time. Where can our listeners follow your work? I know you do a lot of different things with a lot of different outlets.
Jim Meigs: Well, yeah, but the main thing is City Journal, where I've been covering this saga. I've got three articles up following the saga of the Starliner at the International Space Station. And as I said, I'll have a new report coming out on the Manhattan Institute website later this fall. That's my main place. I'm on Twitter @JamesBMeigs. At X, and I also read a monthly column for Commentary Magazine.
Jordan McGillis: Terrific. Jim, thank you so much.
Jim Meigs: Oh, it's my pleasure.
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