WASHINGTON — The moment NASA announced that the crew of Boeing’s Starliner will return to Earth next year on a ship built by the company’s rival, SpaceX, the questions began.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson was asked how confident he was that Boeing’s spaceship would ever fly with a crew again.
“100%,” Nelson replied without hesitation. Nelson said he had just spoken to Boeing’s CEO before the press conference in Houston on Saturday, who assured him that “they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future.”
Not everybody is so sure.
Starliner will return from space as soon as next week. But the two astronauts who blasted off in June for what was supposed to be eight day mission at the International Space Station will now stay for eight months because of glitches that cropped up during the test flight.
It’s another blow for Boeing in what’s been a brutal year for the aerospace giant, and observers say it could have big implications for the company’s future in space.
“Boeing is going to need to grapple with the consequences of the failure of this mission to achieve its test objectives,” said Todd Harrison, a space industry veteran who’s now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Boeing has changed since the contract for Starliner was awarded a decade ago, Harrison said, becoming less focused on human spaceflight.
“It’s fairly likely Boeing will, within a few weeks or months, come to the conclusion that they just need to step back” from Starliner, he said. “This program kind of sticks out as something that doesn't fit with the rest of their business.”
That would be a momentous shift for a company with a storied history in space that stretches back decades.
Ten years ago, Boeing got the lion’s share of funding for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program — more than $4 billion, while the upstart SpaceX got only $2.6 billion. Boeing has since lost an additional $1.6 billion on Starliner.
NASA’s goal all along was to have more than one private company that could get astronauts and equipment into orbit and back. Boeing’s struggles with Starliner make that strategy look smart.
“This really proves that you do need redundancy,” said Makena Young, a fellow with the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Sometimes things go wrong and you need that second plan.”
Young thinks it’s too soon to know if Boeing will walk away from the Starliner program.
“It's not a failure just yet,” Young said. “We very well could still see a success of this system, if it's able to get back to Earth and land safely.”
Space is a relatively small piece of Boeing’s portfolio. The company’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has other pressing problems, like turning around the company’s commercial airline business after major safety and quality control lapses.
The engineering challenges there are very different, but observers say there are some parallels as well.
“Almost all of Boeing's problems are cultural,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation industry analyst at AeroDynamic Advisory. “It's a management team that was completely disconnected from the folks who actually did the design, integration and manufacture of the company's products. That's a recipe for trouble. And you've seen it in jetliners and defense products and now, of course, in space systems.”
Boeing has not said much publicly about Starliner.
“I know this is not the decision we had hoped for, but we stand ready to carry out the actions necessary to support NASA's decision,” wrote Mark Nappi, the head of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, in an internal email that was shared by the company.
“The focus remains first and foremost on ensuring the safety of the crew and spacecraft,” Nappi said. “I have the utmost confidence in this team to prepare Starliner for a safe and successful uncrewed return with the same level of professionalism and determination as you did the first half of the mission.”
Boeing maintained that the astronauts could have returned safely on Starliner. NASA officials decided not to take that chance. But they did try to put a good spin on NASA’s relationship with Boeing.
“I think the key word is partner,” said NASA’s Ken Bowersox during the weekend press conference. “A lot of people want to focus on the contractual relationship where we're buying something from a company. This isn't completely like that, right? We have a contract with Boeing, but it's to work together to develop this capability for our country.”
That partnership between Boeing and NASA continues for now. But the International Space Station is set to be decommissioned in 2030. It’s possible that partnership could end with it — if not sooner.
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