The Boeing Tragedies

A painful contrast to Voyager 1's glorious comeback.

Whattup earthlings,

I’ve been staring at a wall for the last two minutes, mindlessly throwing Trader Joe’s potato chips into my mouth because I can’t figure out how to begin this newsletter. It’s not writer’s block. The topics I’m about to discuss just whiplash across such a major range of seriousness-ness that it isn’t possible to snap everything together with my usual quippy intro. I’ll just start with the happiest news.

Voyager 1 says howdy from over 15 billion miles away. 

If you’ve been following this newsletter, you’ll probably remember that, several months ago, the Voyager 1 interstellar spacecraft stopped sending back legible binary code. It was a huge disappointment because, in other words, this meant V1’s operators back on Earth couldn’t communicate with it; it remained unclear whether this legendary space explorer’s tenure would soon be complete. As of May 22, however, scientists confirmed that V1 is indeed back online, sending back understandable information. It even resumed science operations on two of its four still-operational instruments.

This is a big deal. V1 was the first spacecraft to exit the heliopause, which you can think of as the boundary between our solar system and the rest of the universe. Its twin, Voyager 2, also exited our sun’s vicinity shortly after, but V1 is unfortunately the golden child. As usual, the first is the one that people remember. However, both Voyagers hold one of my favorite space projects ever — those famous golden records. Scientists loaded up these things with relics of the human experience, such as sounds of thunder, an image of a girl tasting something at a supermarket, an X-ray of someone’s hand, violin sheet music, Beethoven’s Fifth symphony, a Peruvian wedding song and an Indian raga. Hopefully, I guess, an alien will find these artifacts someday. A gallery of those Golden Record images is just here, and I highly recommend looking. It will leave you with millions of existential thoughts.

These Olympic sprinters are featured in one of the images on the Golden Record^

In other uplifting space news, the Euclid space telescope has revealed a set of absolutely remarkable cosmic images. They include two sparkling galaxy cluster views, a portrait of a star-birth cocoon, an individual shot of a hazy and iridescent spiral galaxy, and a scene of a more modest galactic group that resembles night time street lights through the eyes of someone with astigmatism (me). The spiral is probably my fave. There it is, just below.

Now, to get to the headline of this story.

I’m not sure if any of you have been following all the latest Boeing nightmares, but I sure have, and I have some updates to report on that front. There’s actually a lot to talk about in terms of Boeing, in fact.

For a quick refresher, a long while back, some whistleblowers affiliated with the company revealed problems with workplace safety. There were also allegations that Boeing manufacturing processes for commercial aviation were substandard; Netflix even released a documentary that exposed quite alarming issues along these lines. It’s a great documentary, actually; I would recommend you watch, if any of this interests you. Anyway, to be more precise, Al Jazeera recently reported that the company has been the subject of 32 whistleblower complaints of the sort over the last three years.

Two of those whistleblowers have now been found dead.

One was Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at a key Boeing supplier who raised concerns about improperly drilled holes in the fuselage of 737 Max jets, and the other was John Barnett, a former Boeing quality control manager who raised alarm over plane quality. Barnett, 62, was found dead in a vehicle in a Holiday Inn parking lot a day after testifying in a relevant deposition about quality concerns; Dean, 45, died after falling into sudden critical condition upon being diagnosed with a MRSA bacterial infection. Boeing’s website itself also says that the first two months of 2024 saw a 500% increase in employee reports of quality and safety concerns when compared to 2023, thanks to a new reporting platform they’ve installed. 

To be clear, no specific connections have been made yet — and it is, at the end of the day, a terrible tragedy.

Separately, another Boeing-related tragedy occurred earlier this month. An extreme level of airplane turbulence impacted a Boeing 777-300ER plane flying with Singapore Airlines and injured many passengers; as of 6 days ago, 58 people were still in the hospital due to the incident and one person had died. Then, a similar type of extreme turbulence impacted a Boeing 787-9 dreamliner flying with Qatar Airways; 12 people were injured and 8 were taken to the hospital. 

In light of these events, scientists began revisiting the question of why this pattern of turbulence is occurring — you may be unsurprised to learn that climate change is the primary suspect. Simply put, warmer air can change wind speeds in jet streams, which dictate how commercial aircraft fly. And greenhouse gas emissions, driven foremost by human activities like burning coal to generate cheap power, foster warmer air. That’s what global warming basically refers to. None of this is “new.” We’ve known how climate change will affect our planet — and there have even been studies about airline turbulence and climate change specifically — yet it’s making headlines now because something dire happened. A classic story, if you ask me.

Furthermore, my final Boeing note has not to do with the company’s commercial aviation sector, but rather its aerospace one. More specifically, Starliner. There’s been a bit of drama going on with this spacecraft, which is supposed to support its first-ever crewed flight in the coming days. To put it simply, the mission was supposed to launch on May 6 — and that’s after technically years of delays — yet the date was pushed back. Then, it was pushed back again. Now, the launch is scheduled for June 1st, but we’ll have to see what happens.

Of importance, the newest delays were due to equipment-related things like a “buzzing” valve and a helium leak, which I believe have since been remedied, yet there had also been previous problems with the craft’s development including the time scientists found a mile of flammable cloth tape inside the vehicle. I also know reporters haven’t been happy at all about the way Boeing has handled releasing updates about the project. A bit stressful, if you ask me. It is, however, positive that the issues have all been identified, at the very least, prior to launch. I will let you know if and when more Boeing controversy comes out. 

That’s Boeing’s Starliner during a previous, non-crewed flight^

Getting away from Boeing, another interesting, or maybe troubling, science update this week dips into tech (as it often does these days). 

Essentially, Scarlett Johansson is threatening Sam Altman (the ChatGPT guy) with legal action. It’s because she says Altman had reached out to her, asking if she’d be willing to voice an upcoming GPT model. The request was presumably because Johansson plays an iconic AI voice in the movie “Her.” It’s one of my favorites, nearly making my Letterboxd top 4. Please watch it if you haven’t already.

So, in response to Altman, Johansson said no. Then, the ChatGPT people (OpenAI) developed the voice, named it Sky, and allowed people to listen. Alas, it sounded just like Johansson! To make matters worse, Altman then tweeted the word “her,” which obviously points to that iconic movie. OpenAI then took Sky down, despite denying that it is a replica of Johansson’s voice — but I am very curious to see what comes of this. The fact that this is even a discussion, to me, is pretty scary.

I’m realizing how long this newsletter is getting, so I am going to very briefly end on two thought-provoking stories. First of all, in line with the OpenAI creepiness, scientists mathematically synthesized birdsongs, and birds indeed reacted to them. Don’t know how I feel about that. And then finally (okay I guess this isn’t thought-provoking at all) a genetic study helped scientists figure out how some cats have a super rare coat color. They’re called salty licorice cats.

Ok bye.

-Mona