Is Starliner being Resurrected?

It looks that way. An oddball question that's hard to ignore comes to mind. Is SpaceX contributing to rescuing Starliner? 

In the last year, a couple of unrelated stories have come up often. The first one is that Starliner is the cause of the problems that NASA (and all the ISS suppliers) had with the dreadful first crewed flight of Starliner in June of '24. First of all, Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams were stranded on the ISS, turning what was planned to be a week long mission into nine months - from June of '24 to March of '25. Later in the year, NASA formally forbade Starliner to carry a crew.  In addition to the ban on all future Crewed missions, they went into a study of how to modify Starliner so that loss of the vehicle wouldn't harm crew, just destroy millions of dollars in supplies

The second story surfaced earlier this summer. SpaceX has said they're discontinuing Falcon 9 flights and retiring the vehicle, and won't commit to flying Crew or Cargo Dragon spacecraft longer than 2030. 

This week, on the All-In Podcast, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell was asked if the company would respond to demand for Crew Dragon and keep flying the vehicle “for some time.”

Then she said something that is practically shocking. Well, maybe just shocking to me. 

Shotwell would not commit to that. “We’re not retiring it today, for sure,” she replied. Then Shotwell suggested that Boeing should really step up and deliver. “There is another provider,” she said. “Boeing has been paid, I think, probably more than we have been paid to develop their human capsule. So we’re just gonna let them have some business. They should fly their capsule. The government paid a lot of money for that.” 

Yes, Boeing was paid more to develop Starliner than SpaceX was for their Dragon capsules, because "everyone knew" that Space is hard and the company with experience dating back to the earliest days in space travel was more likely to get the problem solved than a startup of inexperienced engineers. It's ironic to see the president of SpaceX say, in essence, 'why don't you go to the guys you paid the big bucks to?' Dating back to 2010, for development and certification of their vehicles, NASA paid SpaceX approximately $3.1 billion and Boeing $5.1 billion - 165% of what they paid SpaceX. SpaceX has been the critical provider they simply couldn't live without. With Crew Dragon, SpaceX has launched 13 crewed missions to the ISS, with its next one set for October. All flights to date have been successful. 

In contrast, Boeing has had less than one mission of Starliner and it was as miserable a failure as a mission can be without killing everyone involved.  

A few weeks ago, I posted a piece called "A single sentence Starliner story" with the "punchline" of that title appearing in the third paragraph.

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

This week's story is that after being grounded and prohibited from flying, Boeing’s Starliner seems to be ready to get the starring role in NASA’s spaceflight plans.

Back in June, we were given the story that the long investigation NASA had done on the Starliner crewed mission was completed and concluded the problem was a “Type A” mishap, the most serious level they use.  

As part of this review, new NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the space agency also shared some of the blame for the near-disaster.

“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected, but the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware,” Isaacman wrote in a letter to the NASA workforce at the time. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight.” 

There are many problems here that aren't obvious on first reading. First off, even though Boeing was paid more than SpaceX, it was a fixed cost job and they have to pay for their own mistakes. Starliner has already led to Boeing having spent in excess of $2 billion to "fix" Starliner. (When I screw up something I'm working on, instead of saying "fix," I use "unscrew".) 

But Ars now understands the space agency will provide some funding—it’s not clear how much—to Boeing to resolve the propulsion system issues experienced by the spacecraft in its last two flights.  

Starliner is designed to fit the Atlas V, which is well into doing the last missions in the Atlas family's history, and ULA has just six rockets left. One of them will be used for the uncrewed Starliner 1 test flight, and then five subsequent crewed missions. There will most likely be a competition for a replacement for the Atlas V, and I would expect that ULA is ready for that. Since ULA is joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, I can imagine them having the inside track to launch Starliners after those six Atlas V missions. 

Why would NASA go to these lengths to keep Starliner in the game? There have been questions about Boeing’s commitment to Starliner in recent years, given its financial losses. Boeing might well have thrown in the towel. So it’s possible that NASA is meeting Boeing halfway to keep a needed spaceflight capability going. (It also helps that Boeing has excellent lobbyists.)

But NASA had limited choices given that SpaceX has repeatedly indicated that its plans to retire Dragon by 2030 are more than aspirational. Although the Dragon development program was financially backed by NASA, SpaceX has contractually fulfilled its obligations with the Dragon missions to the space agency. SpaceX can therefore do as it pleases with Dragon.

After the ISS is retired and given a decent "burial at sea" (the mission SpaceX has won), the future of manned flight to a group of privately owned and run Space Stations is going to become an issue. If there's no Falcon 9 with a Crew Dragon, how will crews get to these stations, and get back to the ground? NASA is expected to be an anchor tenant, but that doesn't simplify the problem, it adds to the demand for flights but does nothing for supply. That drives costs up. 

If you're waiting for nifty, easy and cheap conclusion here, I'm sorry. We know the launch providers and the companies possibly able to design something to get customers to private space stations, but there are no solutions mentioned in the source. 

Starliner is getting a helping hand from NASA. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

I should point out that while the artwork is described as "getting a helping hand" it doesn't really say whether the hand is lifting the Starliner up out of or pulling it down into the mud and dirt. Depends on how you see NASA and Boeing.