It’s a bottomless pit of money that you can never get back.
In 2014, 10 years ago, NASA awarded Fixed-price contracts for SpaceX and Boeing develop two spacecraft capable of delivering astronauts to the International Space Station.
The space sector is accustomed to cost-plus contracts, in which NASA picks up all the costs plus extra money so the company can benefit. To encourage innovation, this time NASA asked companies to set a price for their designs and take the risk of any additional costs.
SpaceX and Boeing have won a public tender, beating out bids from Blue Origin and Sierra Space. SpaceX has received $2.6 billion to develop Crew Dragon, a vehicle based on the recently successfully tested Dragon cargo ship. Boeing received $4.2 billion. for the new CST-100 Starliner.
The program under which both contracts were signed was called the Commercial Crew Program: the spacecraft would be owned and operated by their manufacturers, but would provide NASA with transportation for up to four astronauts as a commercial service.
SpaceX has long since won
Each contract required four demonstrations to achieve NASA commercial flight certification: a launch pad abort test, an uncrewed orbital flight test, a mid-launch abort test, and a crewed orbital flight test.
Both spacecraft were supposed to complete these tests and begin operations in 2017, but they were delayed again and again, forcing NASA to buy extra seats on its Soyuz capsules from Russia.
SpaceX successfully completed the last demonstration of Crew Dragon in 2020, launching astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station and returning them successfully. It has since flown 12 times, eight of them for NASA, which rotates astronauts every six months.
As for the Starliner, continues to be postponed to this day. Its first unmanned flight took place in 2019, but it never made it to the International Space Station because of a software glitch: the flight timer went out of sync and the engines burned through their fuel prematurely. The ship then became stranded for months due to corrosion in valves that Boeing eventually redesigned.
Starliner is a bust for Boeing
In 2022, Boeing finally managed to deliver the spacecraft to the space station, but a parachute problem and faulty new valves delayed the first crewed test until June 2024. That was June 5, when astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams (61 and 58) blasted off aboard Starliner despite the discovery of a “small helium leak” that could not be repaired.
The ship arrived at the International Space Station the next day with another in-flight scare. Several additional helium leaks were discovered, and up to five maneuvering system thrusters failed on final approach. Four of them were able to recover, but the problem ended up ruining Boeing’s final test.
Return of the astronauts This was the only demonstration Boeing left. to begin work, but NASA doesn’t trust the ship enough and decides to send Butch and Suni Crew Dragon with two empty seats and two spare suits to return home with SpaceX.
Starliner will return to Earth empty in early September. It’s the greatest humiliation Boeing’s space program can suffer at this point, but there’s a more tangible punishment: a million-dollar loss.
The Starliner program has suffered so many delays and cost overruns that Boeing has not only squandered NASA’s fixed-price contract and the flights it awarded (a total of $5.1 billion in government money): Starliner is Boeing’s biggest bust yet.
Boeing lost $1.6 billion on Starliner. And that expense may only increase in the coming months Now the company and its suppliers (in this case Aerojet Rocketdyne) must repair the propulsion system that caused problems during the manned flight.
NASA wants it to fly again
NASA doesn’t trust it, and it’s a ruinous business for Boeing. The question then becomes whether Starliner will fly again. For Bill Nelson, the head of NASA, there is no doubt: “100 percent confident” that Starliner will fly again.
NASA has invested $5 billion in Starliner, and the International Space Station has more than five years left before it is decommissioned: less than completing certification next year and having two ships as planned to avoid relying entirely on Crew Dragon.
On the other side of the scale, Team Dragon is going like clockwork: Several are already in operation, there are also two launch towers (SpaceX just adapted the SLC-40 platform for human flights), and SpaceX is working with NASA to extend its useful life to more than five flights.
It also doesn’t seem realistic that Starliner will be able to fly the six flights NASA has planned. Hopefully, it will complete certification next year, but it won’t be able to begin regular flights until next year. Given that NASA rotates astronauts twice a year and that the International Space Station will be decommissioned in 2030, the most it will fly is five or fewer: three flights, the only ones it has a firm contract for.
Right now the only thing that seems clear is that Starliner has one last chance: If something else fails on reentry, with the ship empty, NASA will be saved by a crisis comparable to the Columbia disaster, and Boeing will have hammered the final nail into its own coffin.
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