Boeing’s Starliner is a small spacecraft that didn’t do that, and the company is paying a heavy price for the program’s delays. Following the failed test flight several months ago, Boeing is taking an additional $250 million for its commercial crew program, a total it had to spend from its own funds to cover Starliner cost overruns. totaling $1.85 billion.
During Wednesday’s earnings call, Boeing’s newly appointed CEO Kelly Ortberg said the company’s third-quarter total of 6 billion yen, including an add-on to revenue to pay for the Starliner program, Space Policy Online. Revealed the loss of dollars. reported. The charge is in addition to the $125 million the company had to pay in the third quarter to cover additional costs for a public-private partnership with NASA.
Under the $4.2 billion contract with NASA, Boeing will retain full ownership of the Starliner spacecraft. As a customer, NASA purchases round-trip missions that transport crew and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). For those of you who haven’t been following, it’s been a total crap show so far.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner launched to the ISS on June 5, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams for the spacecraft’s first manned test flight. . The spacecraft remained docked at the space station for three months while teams on the ground debated whether to return the crew to Starliner.
During the trip to the ISS, five of the spacecraft’s thrusters failed and the spacecraft developed five helium leaks, one of which was identified before launch. The mission team was on the ground to identify the main problem behind the thruster malfunction before ultimately deciding to return the unmanned Starliner and return the crew to SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. A test was conducted.
The spacecraft left the ISS on September 6, leaving behind two astronauts. Wilmore and Williams, along with SpaceX Crew 9, will spend eight months on the ISS, returning to Earth in February 2025, as opposed to the original plan for a week-long mission in orbit.
That’s not the result Boeing was hoping for. The failed test flight prompted NASA to postpone Starliner’s next launch to the ISS and instead book SpaceX’s crew capsule for two missions in 2025. NASA had hoped Starliner would launch its first operational mission by early next year, but now it has to rely on that. SpaceX, a more reliable commercial partner.
The fate of Starliner remains uncertain, and Boeing must decide whether to scrap the program or continue to suffer these financial blows. “It’s better to do less and do better than do more and do less,” Ortberg said during the earnings call, according to the paper. payload. “Obviously, the core of commercial aircraft and defense systems will remain with Boeing in the long term, but perhaps there are other areas in the periphery that can be more efficiently addressed or that distract from our main goals. There will be something here. “Boeing appears to need to do some soul searching as to whether it wants to stick with its space program.
In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX a contract to develop a spacecraft capable of carrying crew and cargo to the ISS as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program. At the time, Boeing was a well-known force in the industry, while SpaceX was a relative upstart with a lot to prove. But while SpaceX has outperformed the mission over the past four years, launching nine crew members to the space station, Boeing is still struggling to get its first mission certified.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, first conceived in 2010 and inspired by the company’s long history with spacecraft like Apollo, was plagued by cost overruns, delays, technical problems, and numerous has been hit by confusion. It may be time for Boeing to cut its losses and leave space behind, but the company doesn’t seem ready to let go of its crippled spacecraft just yet.
