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from the not-quite-vorsprung-durch-technik dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
On the day before Christmas last year, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from California and put two spy satellites into low-Earth orbit for the armed forces of Germany, which are collectively called the Bundeswehr.
Initially, the mission appeared successful. The German satellite manufacturer, OHB, declared that the two satellites were "safely in orbit." The addition of the two SARah satellites completed a next-generation constellation of three reconnaissance satellites, the company said.
However, six months later, the two satellites have yet to become operational. According to the German publication Der Spiegel, the antennas on the satellites cannot be unfolded. Engineers with OHB have tried to resolve the issue by resetting the flight software, performing maneuvers to vibrate or shake the antennas loose, and more to no avail.
As a result, last week, German lawmakers were informed that the two new satellites will probably not go into operation as planned.
The three-satellite constellation known as SARah—the SAR is a reference to the synthetic aperture radar capability of the satellites—was ordered in 2013 at a cost of $800 million. The first of the three satellites, SARah 1, launched in June 2022 on a Falcon 9 rocket. This satellite was built by Airbus in southern Germany, and it has since gone into operation without any problems.
[...] This new constellation was intended to replace an aging fleet of similar, though less capable, satellites known as SAR-Lupe. This five-satellite constellation launched nearly two decades ago.
According to the Der Spiegel report, the Bundeswehr says the two SARah satellites built by OHB remain the property of the German company and would only be turned over to the military once they were operational. As a result, the military says OHB will be responsible for building two replacement satellites.
[...] the German publication says that its sources indicated OHB did not fully test the functionality and deployment of the satellite antennas on the ground. This could not be confirmed.
This setback comes as OHB is attempting to complete a deal to go private—the investment firm KKR is planning to acquire the German space company. OHB officials said they initiated the effort to go private late last year because public markets had "structurally undervalued" the company.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday July 06 2024, @11:05AM (3 children)
Here's an example...I've been buying legacy Compaq CQ56 laptops off eBay. For parts. I want these old machines as the softwares I have were sold under perpetual license, and I support my work over decades. So I fix these for my own use and as backups so I can swap parts amongst my machines, as they are all identical. I am also preparing for the day I can no longer use them, as I am arranging to have these machines given to those I have made things for.
Note: I have access to the Internet and know about finding helps on YouTube.
Time learning to clone hard drives...several weeks and several crashed drives.
Time it takes me to do it now ... Several Hours
Time learning to use DiskPart...several days counting recovery from mistakes.
Now? Minutes.
Resolving activation issues...months of research...to find others on the net with the same problem, as this legacy stuff is no longer supported by the OEM, while the machines I designed 20 years ago are still working fine. All my design detail files exist in legacy systems.
Then I discover a few fixers I bought have BIOS corruption and other hardware problems. I must learn how to physically disassemble and reassemble the laptops, and re-flash BIOS. I am learning that now. I am several months in. I may have to go as far as the physical PCB work of replacing IC's.
Once I can do this, I should be able to maintain these machines and their data bases until replacement hardware, even "junk" hardware off eBay, becomes unobtanium.
It has taken me decades of work to integrate enough experience to do what I do.
I have seen just how deadly the "leadership" types can be to a team of people like me. To accomplish the total destruction of a company, they need rank, and the privilege of firing any dissent. They love spreadsheets full of dreams. They abhor tools. Yet are good at finding those who will place them in authority over the little people, who see the pay given to those who just get in the way. Seems almost like one of those government psychological research studies designed to see just how much Manipulation, Bullshit, and Assholery a workforce will tolerate before they simply burn out and retire on the job.
I fear working under anyone but the top dog, as I fear the intermediate middleman will just use his power to paralyze me, keep me ignorant, deny my resources, and ruin me in the name of "office politics". My technical skills are no match for dealing in arenas based on people skills.
Another fear I have is that I biologically expire before I show others the ropes in the same manner the ropes were shown to me. I don't see that 60's style teamwork culture I grew up with around anymore.
It has become all merit based Dog-Eat-Dog.
Our greatest strength was communication and working together/teaching each other. That has been replaced with competitive individualism under a generation of business school graduates with spreadsheets, calculating hour by hour, the costs of keeping us around, hiring and firing, for the leanest, meanest money-making machine possible.
People like me cannot exist in that kind of environment. Best hire "yes - men" that know better than question authority. I will live much lower in society, fixing scrap computers, maintaining legacy machines, even working in pizza parlors, than have to work under those who constantly have us at each other's throats.
I don't even try anymore for a corporate job. Bad attitude. Why do I have a "bad attitude"? They need to study that in Business schools for the same reason I study how to fix my stuff. Anybody can take a working thing and destroy it. It took an artisan to build it. If I understand that machine, I get the fruits of its labor...or I can watch others haul it away when I lay it off.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday July 06 2024, @12:37PM (2 children)
I got off on a tangent recalling my last days working in Corporate.
Project Management Tools?
Spreadsheets. Gantt charts
I think the most important thing is you have personally done what you want others to do.
They will tell you anything to get on the payroll, yet devote far more effort on legal means and psychology to stay on the payroll than actually doing anything.
If they do this for high salary, you will attract a lot of finely dressed hand-shakers. It's really hard to attract the ones with a passion for narrow technologies...they form close-knit groups and their associates mostly snap up any available candidates before any resumes are even conceived. I worked for several smaller companies since layoff...I never printed a resume. I just had a few good "bullshit sessions" with the top guy. It was invariably the man who founded the company. It was casual...I do not even own a suit.
The most important thing to me was could I do this using everything I had to throw at it. Including anything I could make or had made. Even if it was spectrum analyzers made with varactor TV tuners.
You are quite generous in your estimation of only a 10 to 1 ratio variance in productivity in people. My experience is there will exixt mostly people who spent years of experience to do an hours worth of work. Buy me a Stradivarius, and I still can't play it! You would just as soon bought me a Chandelier to play.
One either has to homegrown the skillets of the team, or really luck out finding someone who has learned how to solve your problem on someone else's dime.
Which is as about as improbable as me finding the legacy parts I need to address my issues.
It helps a lot that I know exactly what I am looking for and where I might find one.
It's one thing to use leadership tools to manage a project, but in actuality, those are only tools. The finest tools in the hands of someone who doesn't have the experience using it just results in unrealized dreams of what could be. I'm sure you've heard that story of the master violinist who found a $25 fiddle at a neighbor's garage sale and caused such a heated war over it he netted his neighbor $200 for it.
The people who founded that aerospace company I worked at were master violinists. They were replaced with people who could operate a music player.
Plunk the money down, watch investment returns roll in. Just hire musicians and give them what they are to play. So what if a guy who was good on drums was given a sax. Failure. Have to let that guy go. This doesn't go on for long before the patrons stop attending concerts. Even with the latest accounting tools and marketing techniques.
The guys who founded and ran the companies I worked at all had their product and the people who made it front and center. No investors. We all were doing as we were so guided, and the founder did exactly as I do on my stuff...choose the correct part! Don't judge a capacitor by how shiny it is.
The secret to success is mostly choosing the correct part and putting it in the correct circuit. That takes experience. You will develop the tools you need over time, just as I have, to do anything you need.
Me? I am as picky over my tools as a pro golfer is over his clubs. I know my stuff like the back of my hand. I can usually make do with someone else's stuff, but there's apt to be an expensive learning curve as I discover the quirks in the new tools.
I don't know if this helps or not, but having seen things going up, and things going to pot, I have made some observations. You will too.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday July 08 2024, @05:59PM (1 child)
Thanks - interesting observations.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 08 2024, @08:59PM
At my age, attitude had changed too.
Being too old to restart any seniority, vesting, work up the ladder thing, I became a "session guy", an informal contract guy. I no longer needed a steady income. I am there just to fix the problem and go. The gig economy.
However, my California governor has come down hard on gig employees. Everybody has to be a business now, complete with humongous overhead to support an entourage of superfluous participants. It's hard to operate informally at anythng resembling a "reasonable rate".
I have to charge like a "rock star", to support all the baggage that legalizes my contracts. I didn't work under contract. His word was good enough for me.
I design and make stuff. I am not a legal guy. When they need me, they tip me well. A business model much like the guys I know that work on exotic cars.
I like to choose the stuff I am good at, call in friends that I need ( we reciprocate a lot ), the people I can work with, not compete against, lest I enter the twilight zone and long for "Willoughby". I've had my fill of office politics.
Besides, I would never make it through a modern personnel department anymore. It takes a completely different skill to get a job than it does to keep one. The first is marketing, the second is technical. I fail the first.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]