Clock Ticking
Over the weekend, NASA officially decided that it was too risky to return its two stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore on board Boeing’s plagued Starliner.
The decision came as a massive blow to Boeing. After many years of development, the company still doesn’t have a successful crewed test flight under its belt.
And whether the much-maligned capsule will ever be able to deliver and safely return a crew to and from the International Space Station remains an open question.
That’s because NASA is already planning to decommission the orbital outpost in 2030 with SpaceX’s help, giving Boeing roughly five years to get its act together — and it’s already been around five years since the company’s failed uncrewed test flight.
“Boeing is going to need to grapple with the consequences of the failure of this mission to achieve its test objectives,” space industry veteran Todd Harrison told NPR.
Uphill Battle
Instead of running out of time, Boeing may dump its plagued spacecraft long before the ISS is taken out of orbit.
Harrison told NPR that he thinks it’s “fairly likely” that Boeing may choose to “step back” from Starliner “within a few weeks or months.”
“This program kind of sticks out as something that doesn’t fit with the rest of their business,” he added.
Boeing has already lost a staggering $1.6 billion on the development of Starliner. That’s on top of getting more than $4 billion worth of funding through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in 2014.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has done far more with far less funding from the space agency, having completed just shy of a dozen crewed missions to the ISS.
One way to look at the situation is that NASA would have been out of luck if it weren’t for the fact that it signed up both SpaceX and Boeing to develop spacecraft.
“If they had only selected one provider, it would have been Boeing, because SpaceX was the risky prospect at the time,” space industry consultant Laura Forczyk told New Scientist. “So in a way, this is a triumph of the Commercial Crew Program.”
Boeing’s Starliner has been docked at the station since early June, and NASA has yet to announce a date for its uncrewed return — a journey that comes with its own risks.
It’s also unclear when or if Starliner will fly again. As of right now, the company is seemingly keeping all of its options open.
“Boeing continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft,” a Boeing spokesperson told Futurism when asked if Starliner might get canceled. “We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”
More on Starliner: Starliner Is Such a Disaster That Boeing May Cancel the Entire Project
