Boeing can’t bring stranded Starliner astronauts back home. Now SpaceX has to save them.

I wish I was wrong, but it seems I was right. Boeinghis (BA 0.86%) the first manned space flight to the International Space Station (ISS) is a bust.

Ever since they launched astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore on the Starliner on June 5 and delivered them to the space station the next day for a planned eight-day visit, things have been going downhill for Boeing. Even worse, Boeing has no one to blame but itself.

A troubled start

If you recall, Boeing delayed the launch of the Starliner several times. It decided to launch in June, although it never fully resolved an epidemic of sticky valves and persistent helium leaks plaguing the craft. Nor did these problems go away once the Starliner reached the harsh environment of space. Instead, problems multiplied.

En route to the ISS and even after docking, the Starliner caused five helium leaks in its propulsion system and reported four failed thrusters. Within weeks of its arrival, NASA was already making contingency plans in case it couldn’t repair the Starliner and was considering calling in a rival space company to rescue its astronauts.

In late August, NASA confirmed that it would. SpaceX will have to rescue the two astronauts that Boeing has stranded.

Assemble the rescue team

At a press conference on August 24 — one that Boeing was notably absent from — NASA announced plans to detach the Starliner from the ISS early next month and bring it back to Earth without its crew. As for astronauts Williams and Wilmore, they will be required to remain on the ISS until at least February 2025 (they were supposed to return home in June 2024).

Meanwhile, NASA will continue sending a SpaceX Crew Dragon to the ISS — the Crew-9 mission — on September 24. Crew-9 will carry only two (instead of the planned four) astronauts to the station. Then, when it’s time for them to go home in February, Crew Dragon will use their two empty seats to bring Williams and Wilmore home as well.

NASA explained its decision by noting that despite nearly three months of work trying to fix and fix the problems with Starliner at the ISS, the craft still “does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight.”

Because crew safety is paramount, NASA will not allow astronauts to fly the Starliner again.

What does this mean for Boeing?

With all the trouble Boeing has had getting the Starliner to work properly, you’d think at this point it would throw up its hands and give up. (And you wouldn’t be alone.) But there are problems with taking this course of action, should Boeing decide to do so.

Boeing operates (or, more accurately, is trying to operate) Starliner on a fixed-price contract with NASA. Valued at $4.2 billion when it was originally awarded 10 years ago, and later increased to $5.1 billion, the contract requires Boeing to conduct “at least one crewed flight test” to and from ISS, followed by “at least two and up to six. , manned missions to the space station.”

So far, Boeing has completed half of a crewed flight test — this one — and zero post-flight test crewed “missions.”

Boeing needs to fly at least two more missions, and ideally six, to be entitled to the total $5.1 billion (most of which Boeing has already spent, by the way). But this i can’t to conduct those manned missions until after the test flight is completed. And with the Starliner coming home without its crew, there is a very strong argument that the test flight will remain incomplete even if the Starliner returns safely.

Boeing’s losses are high

If that’s how NASA sees things, then Boeing has a dilemma. First, they have to figure out what went wrong with the Starliner on this flight, fix it, and get it ready to fly again — all of which costs money. Then, he might have to retake his test flight — which costs more money. Only then would Boeing be ready to fly manned operational missions for which it would pay.

Complicating matters further, all the while the clock is ticking on the ISS itself, which is slated for decommissioning after 2030. Even if everything goes 100% well for Boeing from here on out, there may not be enough time left on the ISS. schedule to conduct more than three or four operational Starliner missions.

What this all boils down to for Boeing is a pair of bad choices: Option 1 is to abandon the Starliner program, abandon its contract with NASA, and take a huge earnings charge for lost revenue. (And that’s on top of the $1.6 billion in fees Boeing has already incurred on the Starliner). Option 2 is to try to get the Starliner back on track — probably still he didn’t get to run all the missions he’d hoped to — and therefore take a slightly less huge cut.

Any way you slice it, though, the Starliner is going to cost Boeing money. The only question at this point is: How much?