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More bad news for Boeing

It seems that many years of bad decisions are now coming back to bite one of the world's largest and most successful aerospace companies, Boeing.

After a series of failures that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people in crashes of the 737 Max 9 aircraft, Boeing's fortunes have continued to fall in the wake of the Starliner defects that have left two astronauts marooned on the International Space Station.

Now huge swathes of Boeing employees are on strike and, it seems, will remain so until such time as the company comes up with what they consider to be an acceptable offer for wage increases.

And just this week, more really bad news for the company.

The Intelsat-33e communications satellite made by Boeing is reported to have undergone a catastrophic event that resulted in its rapid disassembly, some 35,000 Km above the surface of the earth.

The destructive dismantling of the satellite seems to have been as the result of some kind of explosion, perhaps related to the rockets used to ensure it maintains its geostationary orbit.

Whatever the cause, the result is that we now have at least 40 pretty sizeable chunks of debris hurtling through space and a great many more smaller bits of shrapnel also whizzing around at high speed.

Fortunately, since this wasn't a low-earth-orbit craft, there's little chance of other satellites being endangered by the event but it does deal another blow to a corporation that has had its fair share of knocks recently. Despite the low risk to other satellites, warnings have been issued to other operators and the large chunks are being tracked and monitored.

Surprisingly, the Intelsat-33e wasn't even a new satellite, having been launched back in 2017 and providing service over much of Europe, although not without earlier propulsion issues being experienced, for over seven years up until its recent demise.

Whether this was a manufacturing fault that has only just surfaced or whether it was something else such as an impact from a micro-meteor makes little difference to the many companies who have suddenly found themselves having to try and find alternative carriers for their data.

In recent days I've also see a bunch of reports in the media warning that we're now in the peak of the solar cycle and that at any moment, large solar flares and subsiquent CMEs could wreak havoc on the satellites above our heads -- especially the geosynchronous ones that are less protected by earth's magnetic field.

Whilst this is true, solar events capable of destroying or significantly disrupting satellite operations for more than a short period are pretty rare so I'm not expecting to see the sky fall any time soon.

As for Boeing however, well it does seem to be weathering an almost perfect storm that is shaking the corporation to its very foundations. The next few years could be pivotal to the future of Boeing. I won't be investing in its stock, that's for sure.

Carpe Diem folks!

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