Launch delays for Starliner have drained more than $1B from Boeing
As SpaceX gears up for its next crewed mission to the International Space Station, NASA and Boeing have taken a “step back” from plotting out just when its beleaguered CST-100 Starliner will attempt its first ever crewed launch.
The continued delays have meant a loss of more than $1.1 billion to Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program to date including another $257 million reported in the company’s 2nd quarter earning report this week,
“On Starliner we’re in lockstep with our customer. We prioritize safety, and we’re taking whatever time is required,” said Boeing President and CEO David Calhoun during the 2nd quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “We’re confident in that team and committed to getting it right.”
The program has been mired in extended delays since 2019 when its first uncrewed test flight was not able of rendezvous with the ISS. While the capsule did make it safely back to Earth, NASA dubbed the mission a “high visibility close call” that forced a major overhaul of the program including hardware, software and management practices from both Boeing and NASA oversight.
More than 2 ½ years later, Boeing was able to complete the uncrewed test docking flight launching atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in May 2022 and making a safe return six days later. That opened the door for Boeing to finally attempt its test flight with humans on board, which could then lead to it finally sharing crew transport duties with SpaceX. But that too has now been put on hold after new issues crept up this year.
When the two companies won the NASA contract announced in 2016, Boeing’s take was $4.2 billion for the two test flights and six rotational crew missions.
As a fixed-price contract, the onus of delays including the uncrewed demo test reflight have meant a buildup of quarterly losses as part of Boeing’s Defense, Space, & Security division, which in the last quarter reported a total loss of $527 million, so nearly half of that was blamed on Starliner.
“This is a complex business. We expect items to come up and when they do, we’re transparent. We take action and we move forward. This is what progress looks like,” Calhoun said.
The most recent delay came after teams halted plans for a July launch with NASA astronauts on board after finding issues with joints used in the spacecraft’s parachute system as well as identifying flammable tape used throughout the hardware that has to be replaced.
“When we found the problems with the parachute joint and the … flammable tape back in June, we took a step back and decided to pause really everything that we’re doing with the vehicle,” said NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich on Tuesday during a press conference for the upcoming SpaceX Crew-7 mission.
He said the parachute solution is well underway with teams having found a replacement for the joint that was identified as a risk, and the new joint is undergoing testing now with a plan in the works to get the new joints into the existing Starliner parachute system. In tandem, teams have already begun to remove a lot of the tape that was deemed a fire risk, but it’s a big job as it was used in a lot of places to protect wire bundles in the spacecraft.
So for now NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will have to bide their time before their ride is declared safe and ready for flight.
So while Boeing’s future Starliner launch remains a question mark, SpaceX continues its duties as the sole U.S.-based transportation of NASA astronauts, which it has been doing on a regular basis since the May 2020 test flight Demo-2 took up Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley followed by regular rotation missions about every six months.
Crew-7 is the seventh such flight for its Crew Dragon, this one aiming for liftoff no earlier than Aug. 17 flying with four astronauts from four different space agencies for the first time: NASA astronaut and mission commander Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA astronaut and pilot Andreas Mogensen, mission specialist JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and mission specialist Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
The launch of the quartet in the Crew Dragon Endurance making its third-ever flight is aiming for a 6:56 a.m. liftoff atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A with a docking at the ISS the next day. The Crew-6 members awaiting Crew-7’s arrival to the station will stay on board for about five days transitioning duties before their return for a splashdown in their Crew Dragon Endeavour off the coast of Florida.
Crew-7 will remain on board for around 190 days before SpaceX takes up Crew-8 sometime in early 2024 while Starliner continues efforts to fix its latest issues.
“The work on Starliner is progressing well,” Stich said. “We need to step back a little bit and take a look at how all this work lines up. We’re not really ready to talk about a launch opportunity yet. We’re going to work the technical issues first and then we’ll sit down with the Boeing team when the time is right and pick a launch target.”