Should STARLINER Be Saved?

Summary: A broken Starliner capsule famously stranded Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the ISS. Now, as NASA struggles to fit the problem-ridden spacecraft into its LEO plans, the question becomes: SHOULD Starliner be saved? Or should NASA cut its losses and hand the reins to the Commercial Crew Program over to SpaceX as its sole service provider? We look at the issue from all sides and read the tea leaves regarding NASA’s intentions for the Starliner program.

Transcript:

Can Starliner Be Saved?

Welcome to the Edge of Space.

I’m your host, Randall C. Kennedy

It’s the question on many a NASA administrator’s minds these days. After the spectacular failure of Boeing’s commercial crew program candidate during its first manned flight test, many in the industry are now questioning Starliner’s future.

And with the company recently disclosing hundreds of millions in additional program losses – the byproduct of a fixed contract structure with NASA that puts the burden for cost overruns on the supplier – the financial hit to Boeing’s bottom line has now surpassed $2 billion.

That’s a lot of money, especially for a company struggling to deal with “suboptimal outcomes” across several different product lines.

Now, to say that Starliner was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back might be viewed as hyperbolic. However, there’s no question that the failure of CFT-1 was a black eye that this onetime leading aerospace company would have liked to have avoided.

Still, despite Starliner’s status as a blistering sore on the ass end of Boeing’s balance sheet, the fact remains that NASA *WANTS* this vehicle. Or, more accurately, they want *ANY* vehicle capable of delivering a human crew safely to Low Earth Orbit, as long as said vehicle doesn’t have a SpaceX logo on its outer hull.

You see, NASA is sick of SpaceX. With the company’s founder, Elon Musk, running roughshod over the federal government, NASA has found itself scrambling to preserve its meager budget while navigating around the blatant conflict of interest that arises when the head a key service provider is placed in a position of authority over all things spending-related.

Suboptimal, indeed!

And with the continuing fallout over the Butch and Suni, were they/weren’t they stranded saga, having to rely on SpaceX to provide the duo’s “Orbital Uber” ride back to Earth no doubt stuck in a few craws down in Houston.

Which is why the agency is desperate for a Starliner comeback – and also why they keep painting each new finding from the post-CFT testing and recertification process in the best possible light.

For example, in a recent report NASA revealed that Boeing had successfully addressed a whopping 70% of the issues that were identified during the CFT post-mortem.

70 percent. Seven. Zero.

Only a federal agency could publish such a result – basically, a “C” grade – and call it progress. Which goes to show just how eager NASA is to see a viable alternative to SpaceX Dragon come online. Because being beholden to any one company – or larger than life personality – flies in the face of NASA’s three core principles:

Redundancy, redundancy, and more redundancy!

So, with NASA clearly unwilling to give up on Boeing’s troubled prototype…

“I don’t know how to quit you!”

…it’s time to take stock of what progress HAS been made towards getting this wonky beast back off the ground.

One of the most critical failure points during CFT-1 was the malfunctioning of two of the capsule’s Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control – or OMAC – thrusters. These critical propulsion mechanisms are what allow Starliner to orient itself in space and make course corrections.

You know, MINOR stuff like that.

Without a functioning OMAC system, Starliner is rather hard to control. So, getting to the bottom of this failure has been a top priority for Boeing during the CFT-1 postmortem.

And…it turns out that, because of some questionable design decisions around exhaust plume routing, the OMAC thruster components had a tendency to overheat, and that interference between the various “doghouses” – Boeing’s term for the self-contained thruster assemblies – could cause multiple systems to fail.

Which of course they did, disrupting Starliner’s on-orbit performance to the point where the capsule barely made it to the ISS.

Then, of course, there are the famous helium leaks, the ones that plagued Starliner during a previously aborted launch attempt in May of 2024, and which reared their ugly heads again during CFT-1 in the form of a loss of function within numerous reaction control thrusters.

This one turned out to be a matter of a poorly manufactured or otherwise “crimped” seal on the propellant lines leading to the RCS modules – a problem that Boeing famously DOWNPLAYED in the postmortem for the aforementioned aborted launch attempt.

Yeah, just launch the thing. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.

NASA claims that Boeing has made “good progress” on addressing these flaws, including reengineering how heat is managed in between “doghouses.” But as for when they’ll have a complete solution to the myriad problems plaguing the vehicle, that remains unclear. The work is apparently ongoing, as is the search for a replacement seal to remedy the RCS valve issues.

Assuming they resolve these problems to NASA’s satisfaction, Boeing could see a return to flight sometime later this year, though scheduling conflicts and the need to slot in more reliable vehicles…

Ahem, Dragon, ahem.

…for critical missions may see that RTF bumped into early 2026.

Meanwhile, SpaceX just keeps on rolling. After a minor delay because of a wonky strongback clamp, the Crew 10 mission launch went flawlessly, emphasizing just how mature and reliable the Falcon 9 + Crew Dragon solution has become.

But it’s still just one rocket, from a single provider – basically, the only game in town when it comes to ISS access from the Western world.

And it’s also a situation that NASA clearly finds unacceptable. Hence their EXTREME patience with the blunderbuss fail-fest that has been Starliner.

Now, given enough time, and assuming Boeing can continue to eat the mounting program losses, I’m sure this troubled spacecraft can be whipped into a crew-worthy alternative to Dragon.

However, other economic factors – such as NASA’s dwindling budget and the non-reusable nature of Starliner’s preferred booster, United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 – could skew the CCP irreversibly towards SpaceX as a sole provider.

And as entertaining as that outcome may seem – Boeing made this bed all on their own – I still firmly believe that the best check against complacency is healthy competition.

Bottom Line: Despite numerous setbacks, NASA seems hell-bent on keeping Starliner around – at least for now. But if Boeing slips again and fails to deliver a reliable, functional system within the next six months, I can see NASA cutting its losses and handing the CCP reins over fully to SpaceX. Which is an outcome I’m sure the master of DOGE will find worthy of a quip or two during his next Joe Rogan appearance.

Anyway, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this content, please tell the world by smashing the like button and subscribing to the channel. And don’t forget the notification bell so you’re alerted when our next space-related rant drops.

But in the meantime, remember: Don’t look up! Because you might just spot a malfunctioning Starliner, and Boeing has had enough humiliation for one decade.