New Boing troubles: satellite goes *BOOM*

[thewayne]

So on top of its aircraft troubles, and its spaceship trouble, oh - did you hear they have an on-going strike, now they have had a satellite explode in space! (the strike is in its sixth week and workers (jet assembly line) voted to reject Boing's most recent offer) Boing just announced a $6 billion quarterly loss last week

So. The satellite. The Intelsat 33e was launched in 2016 and experienced "an anomaly" Saturday, and is now in 20 trackable pieces, and who knows how many smaller ones according to Space Command, Roscomos says they're tracking 80, and the major debris does not represent a threat to other satellites. These huge satellites are normally in much higher geostationary orbits so the debris is a very different field than if they were in lower orbits.

Its job was to provide communications across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Boing is working with other satellite vendors to reestablish services for its customers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-satellite-intelsat-33e-explodes-space-anamoly/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/0142204/boeing-made-satellite-explodes-in-space

Strike news:
https://apnews.com/article/boeing-earnings-strike-vote-new-ceo-af6c6dab8747d5b8189df97a55e6b8d9

Comments

[silveradept]

And the disasters for Boeing continue. At this point, I doubt they're even going to be attractive for a competitor to snap up and try to right the ship. Or, more likely, to drive it firmly into the ground while enriching their own stockholders.

[thewayne]

Who would have the money to buy up all their assets and debt?  I don't think Airbus would want it, and the US Gov't would probably block such an acquisition on monopoly terms.

[silveradept]

I can imagine some person who thinks he keeps making winners with regard to SpaceX and Twitter thinking he'd like to get in on the aviation business. (And then run it into the ground like all the others.)

[thewayne]

Hmmm.  As heavily unionized as Boing is, and his hatred of unions, that would be an interesting thing to see.  I'm not sure that Leon has the funds for it.  He burned a lot of banks with the purchase of Twitter, they've taken a shave of 40-60% of their investment and weren't able to sell it off like they'd hoped.  He would have to sell off a massive amount of held stock, and that puts him in less control of his other prizes.  I'm not sure it would be possible for him to pull it off: I would expect the banks to be hesitant as it's a somewhat distressed asset at this time and again, he burned the banks and investors over Twitter.

[silveradept]

If the weird guy can keep getting inexplicable loans from Deutsche Bank, I'm sure there are enough banks out there who would lend him funds.

I can imagine him running up against the union and not caring and doing his best to make sure the place is swiftly de-unionized so he cam do what he wants. I'm not sure he'd really care about labor law, either, or he'd shop for friendly judges.

[thewayne]

Speaking of which, the Supreme Court is getting PO'd about judge/circuit shopping.  Seems like 23% of the cases they're hearing this term are coming from ONE circuit court - the Fifth.  A frustrated Supreme Court to look at one version of judge shopping : NPR