Will Boeing's Starliner Launch Crew Before 2025?

Back when Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was first being developed, the company was aiming for the first crewed flight test to occur in 2017. Now 6 years later, this mission is still yet to happen, and new delays are being announced. Most recently, the launch scheduled for March 2024, was just delayed at least another month to no earlier than the middle of April 2024.

This joins a long list of recent delays that have pushed the launch back from early this year to the middle of 2024. Currently, Boeing is still working on fixing the crew capsule after discovering a few issues related to flammable tape and parachute safety margins. Once fixed, assuming no other issues are found, the spacecraft will launch two humans to the International Space Station before returning home.

Unfortunately for Boeing, these delays hurt the program in more ways than one. Besides charges adding up to over $1 billion from NASA, the company is also missing out on a lot of crew launch contracts that SpaceX by default is winning. Here I will go more in-depth into the new delay, current Starliner progress, what this means for SpaceX’s Dragon, and more.

Credit:

Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:57 - Additional Delays
3:43 - SpaceX Dragon

[_photonx]

At one point a year or two ago, SpaceX had three spacecraft docked at the ISS, including a manned capsule. Meanwhile, Old $pace just keeps bumbling along, for ten times the cost.

[RevMikeBlack]

I really don't think I would want to ride in that thing. I'm old enough to remember the Apollo 1 fire very clearly. That spacecraft had one problem after another, too. In fact, Mission Commander Virgil Grissom was griping about problems just minutes before the fateful event. Unfortunately, Starliner walks and quacks a lot like Apollo 1.

[sandbridgekid]

Boeing owes at least 6 FREE launches of Starliner to NASA.

[martythemartian]

Should have gone with Crew Dreamchaser. 😆 Boeing's gone boing!

[doltsbane]

The real question is whether Starliner will launch crew while there's still an ISS to launch to.

[odysseusrex]

I don't think anybody expected the value of the multiple, independent provider philosophy to be so starkly demonstrated before one of the providers even got off the ground. Can you imagine the fix we'd be in if those in Congress who had favored a noncompetitive, single source, cost plus contract to Boeing had had their way? I was very excited about the idea of the United States becoming the first country with two different operational manned spacecraft. Now however, we are three years into the era of commercial manned spaceflight and SpaceX has been doing the job all by themselves. They have completely fulfilled their original six flight contract, because they have been able to pick up the slack and do Boeing's job as well as their own, and are now well into their second contract while we still wait for Boeing to finally fly a crew. Honestly, the excitement of having those two spacecraft is no longer all that great. Looking forward, the day may yet come when we are flying Crew Dragon, Starliner, Orion, Dream Chaser, Starship, and whatever manned spacecraft Blue Origin now seems to be working on. That will be truly glorious. Starliner won't be a very big part of that though.
I am not sure Starliner would have been very competitive in the private contracts SpaceX has received. It's not nearly as capable a craft. Since it is only capable of operating independently for sixty hours, I don't think they could meaningfully have competed for the Inspiration 4 or Polaris Dawn flights. SpaceX has, of course, subcontracted with Axiom Space to handle marketing, training, and operation of their private space station missions. This frees up SpaceX to concentrate on their core business, flying in space, and let's somebody more geared to that kind of mission handle the details. Also, without wanting to be indelicate, one f the key advantages of Crew Dragon over Starliner is a key amenity, vital to crew comfort, a toilet. Starliner crew are going to have to relieve themselves in bags or diapers. That was one thing for astronauts in the 1960s, who were all current or former military officers, trained in adversity, and filled with both the pioneer and warrior spirit, striving to beat the Russians in the Space Race. Modern civilians are not going to be so accepting of that indignity. There had been plans for Starliner to be an important crew delivery system for the Orbital Reef space station, but now that that project seems to have fallen apart, that is obviously no part of their future. Frankly, I think Boeing wants to get through their six flight contract and then drop the whole thing as a bad deal.
Considering the way Boeing was unceremoniously dropped in the first round of two other more recent space service contracts, Lunar HLS and Lunar Gateway resupply if I remember right, and it even turned out that a senior NASA official had cheated on their behalf by providing them with inside information on the competition, which they happily took, and they still lost in the first round, it would not surprise me if Boeing were to decide that they just don't want to participate in space services contracts anymore going forward. Their future participation in the space part of aerospace is going to be building satellites and components for other people. That's perfectly honorable and, frankly highly profitable, but doesn't generate a lot of the kind of publicity that puts a company in the public eye. How the mighty have fallen.

[Adrian-qkfn]

The way things are going you have got to wonder if Boeing will be ready to fly humans to the ISS by the time they are planning to deorbit it!

[WaltBrgger]

Great vid, thanks! Imo Boeing knew about the tape long ago. But there was nothing they could do by the time Starliner was built. It was the independent NASA watchdog committee that called attention to the tape (from Boeing data) and the new chute design, pretty much at the last minute before Sunny Williams got aboard. Bottom line is they can't get to all the tape without taking Starliner apart. And removing the tape also destroys a lot of the wires. So really they have to rebuild almost from scratch and then begin at the start of the testing regime. That's what they desperately wanted to avoid all along. If they are now making noises about the tape being not so bad, that makes me think they hope NASA will agree and that they have not started on doing it the hard way. If it weren't for SpaceX we would never have seen how bad Old Space really is.

And then Steve Stich talks about "backfilling" the Boeing flights, i.e. give Boeing flights until their number matches SpaceX's number. In other words, Starliner does all the remaining flights to ISS and Dragon does none. Right, no bias there. See, putting Boeing back on the gravy train and making sure SpaceX does not recover its R&D costs *promotes* competition. If SpaceX had put 5% of its budget into lobbyists, we could be sipping beers on the Moon by now.

[plainText]

I think the future of Starliner will depend largely on it's launch vehicle.
The current Atlas V is basically already retired and won't be around long term.
Boeing could launch Starliner on Falcon9, but that would defeat the whole purpose of dissimilar redundancy.
Really, the only long-term future for Starliner lies in crew-rating a new launch vehicle, such as Vulcan Centaur. However one question remains:
Who will pay to crew rate Vulcan Centaur? Boeing? ULA? NASA? A mix of all three?

[joaohneuhaus]

Holy crap, 1.4 billion extra to spaceX to deliver what boeing could not? That's a lot of money! Starship is very thankful.

[sandbridgekid]

Cargo Dreamchaser will be operational before Starliner takes its first crew to ISS, with manned Dreamchaser on its first test flight to ISS before Boeing Starliner gets accepted as operational.

[liquidpatriot]

The question should be: "Will Boeing Starliner ever fly crew at all?"
One problem after another, the entire capsule needs to be deconstructed to replace all the tape, and among software and parachute issues who knows what else is hidden that poses a potential risk.

[ericgeorge]

Sierra Space may just beat Boeing to American commercial crew.

[kathyowens]

Is it true that Starliner will not have to do an in-flight abort test? I know they did the pad abort several years ago. Spacex did pad abort then the in-flight abort right after Demo 2. So is it because theres a limited number of Atlas 5 that they're not doing the second abort test? I dont know but it seems to me NASA would definitely want to test and make sure it works properly. Especially after all the problems Starliner has had. Why take the chance?

[Gnefitisis]

Finally a endheaded analysis of the potential profit margins from continuing the Starliner program. So many online commentators just bluster hero worship or some fanboyism. Good reporting. :)

[CB-rvkb]

great set of visuals. Different topic... I am dying to see the inflatable space station modules being taken up and deployed. Will starship do this job or falcon? The extra payload volume and weight would allow VERY large module size.

[jasoncramer]

Im not sure starliner will ever launch a single manned Mission. For the sake of the astronauts, i hope it never does.

[andrethib]

"Will Boeing's Starliner Launch Crew Before 2025?" Short answer: no. Long answer:

[khankrum]

Not can it launch that is the problem. Can it find a crew brave enough to fly it is the real question!

[zam]

This is crazy, an aerospace company that doesn't want to do aerospace
I really wonder about Boeing's management