Article

2007-07-22 Science & Technology

Northrup buys Scaled Composites (SpaceShip 1 developer)

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Posted by 3dc 2007-07-22 01:14|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top

#1 Good. As time goes by, my confidence in humanity's survival on Earth lessens.

Posted by gromgoru 2007-07-22 06:54|| 2007-07-22 06:54|| Front Page Top

#2 I'm not sure this is good at all. If Northrop is anything like the defense contractor I work for (a good bet), they'll impose their suffocating corporate 'practices and 'procedures' on their new division. Engineering will be subject to the 'process' straightjacket. The real brains & innovators will find themselves impeded at every turn by the 'do nothing, it's safer' management crowd and will bolt.

Posted by PBMcL 2007-07-22 12:52|| 2007-07-22 12:52|| Front Page Top

#3 Or something could go right for a change, and we could have re-usable (and one-use) hypersonic craft that could put special forces ops (or weapons) anywhere on the planet in 35 minutes...

Posted by M. Murcek">M. Murcek 2007-07-22 13:09|| 2007-07-22 13:09|| Front Page Top

#4 3DC, as a former Northrop employee, I will repeat what we had to say at least three times a week. NorthrOp is a defense contractor. NorthrUp is an agricultural seed company and the more profitable of the two. Pronunciation always caused confusion. The Chinese version of our business cards transliterated to No-Throw-Up

Posted by RWV 2007-07-22 14:16|| 2007-07-22 14:16|| Front Page Top

#5 Wow. A surprise and not a surprise. Scaled has always operated very loose and not tied down, per Burt's thinking, even though he sold it some years ago. So the culture change may be dramatic. OTOH, Scaled has done a lot of development work for NG and the fact that repeatable processes are not in place probably inhibited further and increased work.

Posted by Woozle Elmeter2970 2007-07-22 14:55|| 2007-07-22 14:55|| Front Page Top

#6 Northrup will screw it up.

Trust me on that. They'll start bogging them with corporate objective performance measures, and then bog it by shoveling 6-sigma and ISO9000 into unneeded places.

And they'll bring in a pile of mediocre managers as well, and boneheaded marketing and sales people, none of whom can get out of the box with ideas.

I saw them dismantle TRW that way.

Posted by OldSpook 2007-07-22 23:50|| 2007-07-22 23:50|| Front Page Top

23:50 OldSpook
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