A single sentence Starliner story

A much larger story about Boeing's Starliner appears at Ars Technica, but the whole article can be summed up in one sentence. The sentence came from Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg at an earnings call Boeing made to investors and followers, when he was asked how the work on resolving the problems and redesigning everything was coming along.  

The single sentence was:

“The redesign of the Starliner deficiencies is going quite well, and we’re feeling pretty good about that,” Ortberg said.

You will remember the disastrous first manned flight of the Starliner, in the summer of '24. The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, barely made it to the ISS. While there, as flight data was reviewed NASA decided not to return the two on their Starliner, but by a series of changes to crews and launches, turned Butch and Suni's two week mission in June of '24 to the nine month mission that had them return to Earth in March of '25. You'll note both of the retired after that mission.

This February, NASA announced that the failure analysis had rated it a “Type A” mishap, the worst or most serious level failure. 

At the time, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the space agency was working with Boeing to “fully understand the risks associated” with the Starliner spacecraft, and to remediate them. Starliner would not fly its next mission, a cargo flight to the International Space Station, until those problems were identified and remediated. He declined to put a date on the test flight. 

During the earnings call Ortberg suggested much of that work was completed, and that the primary issue now is scheduling a launch date with NASA for Starliner to ferry cargo to the space station to ensure there was an open docking port and astronaut time to unload the vehicle.

An official told Ars that the primary factor now for when Starliner launches is aligning port availability on the space station and launch capabilities on the ground. That means the next flight could possibly be this year, since we're still closer to midyear than the start of the last quarter. 

It turns out, that something none of us thought about while the Summer of '24 mission was going on is suddenly poking its nose up and becoming a concern. Remember the story two weeks ago that mentioned crew dragon might be becoming an issue? 

...  there are uncertainties about the availability of Crew Dragon in the 2030s, and more recently SpaceX has been telling industry officials that it plans to retire Crew Dragon (which flies on the Falcon 9 rocket) no later than 2030. This raises serious concerns for not just NASA, which may seek to fly to the International Space Station into the early 2030s, but also for planned private space stations intended to take its place. These companies are having difficulties negotiating crew transportation services as a result. 

The loss of Crew Dragon will be an immediate concern for NASA, and Cargo Dragon isn't far behind that. I can imagine that NASA would have an easier time convincing SpaceX to build another one or two of each format dragon than the problems Boeing has dealing with Starliner.  The last six Atlas 5s are dedicated to Starliner launches, and after those, there is no launch vehicle for Starliner. That's probably far enough in the future that there's time to figure out ways around it. 

Starliner, by contrast, has several disadvantages. Its Service Module, which houses all of the costly propulsion systems, does not return to Earth after each flight but rather burns up in the atmosphere. Sources said this expendable module costs tens of millions of dollars. There is also the fact that, after its initial run of NASA missions, Starliner will have no rocket following the retirement of the Atlas V vehicle. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket is an option, but there would be not-inconsiderable costs to human-rate the rocket, and it would be more expensive than a Falcon 9. 

SpaceX is in an enviable position as being not simply the single biggest launch provider in the world, but the company that launches more than the rest of the world combined. The other side of that is customers might not be inclined to switch over from the world's most reliable rocket to the less well-known Starship. (Thursday morning at 3:09AM EDT, SpaceX is launching a National Security Payload for the NRO from Cape Canaveral. When I saw this will be the 7th flight for this booster, I literally said, "ooh! A new one!")

Boeing's first Starliner capsule to fly, "Sea Anchor" (visible just below the American flag) before the 2024 flight. Image credit: Boeing