helium is small and it’s hard to keep it in a thing because it leaks out at a molecular level

Well yeah. Sounds like a tough problem. Also sounds like a thing you should have accounted for in your design. Also sounds like you should fix all the places where it’s leaking not at a molecular level.

And Boeing, honestly, stop whinging about it being “hard”.

It’s fucking rocket science. Of course it’s hard.

Seriously, as an engineer who’s worked in aerospace, it’s just absolutely shocking to watch Boeing consistently fuck up on stuff like this so regularly. They’ve fallen so, so far, and it’s honestly a bit heartbreaking. They used to be a company that was synonymous with engineering rigor and quality. Now they’re bitching about how it’s hard to build space capsules (uh… yes, obviously…?) as an excuse for their insufficient QC process and development rigor, and can’t even figure out how to match up their outsourced (side note: stop fucking outsourcing) components to their own assembly processes in a coherent, auditable, and safe fashion retroactively - let alone at the time of assembly.

This is what you get when the fucking beancounters run the show.