"Following weeks of speculation, NASA finally made it official on Saturday: two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in June will not return home on that vehicle. Instead, the agency has asked SpaceX to use its Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth...
Saturday's announcement has big implications for Boeing... Ars will have additional coverage of Starliner's path forward later today...
Engineers from Boeing and NASA tested the performance of these thrusters at a facility in White Sands, New Mexico, in July. Initially, the engineers were excited to replicate the failures observed during Starliner's transit to the space station. (Replicating failures is a critical step to understanding the root cause of a hardware problem.)
However, what NASA found after taking apart the failed thrusters was concerning, said the chief of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, Steve Stich.
"I would say the White Sands testing did give us a surprise," Stich said Saturday. "It was this piece of Teflon that swells up and got in the flow path and causes the oxidizer to not go into the thruster the way it needs to. That's what caused the degradation of thrust. When we saw that, I think that's when things changed a bit for us."...
The result of this uncertainty is that NASA will now turn to the other commercial crew provider, SpaceX. This is not a pleasant outcome for Boeing which, a decade ago, looked askance at SpaceX as something akin to space cowboys. I have covered the space industry closely during the last 15 years, and during most of that time Boeing was perceived by much of the industry as the blueblood of spaceflight while SpaceX was the company that was going to kill astronauts due to its supposed recklessness..."
The now-iconic March 2004 Aviation Week cover from 20 years ago... that little rocket is SpaceX's original Falcon 1 rocket. Elon put half the money he got from selling his portion of Paypal into starting SpaceX. (The other half went into Tesla.) But despite that, they only had enough money to build four Falcon 1's... and the first three failed to reach orbit.
As to the question the magazine asks, I'd say the answer is an unequivocal 'Yes'. Privately held SpaceX's valuation is now estimated at ~$150 billion.
EXCERPTS: So where does this leave Boeing and its multibillion-dollar contract? Can the company fulfill the breadth of its commercial crew contract with NASA before the space station's scheduled retirement in 2030? It now seems there is little chance of Boeing flying six more Starliner missions without a life extension for the ISS. Tellingly, perhaps, NASA has only placed firm orders with Boeing for three Starliner flights once the agency certifies the spacecraft for operational use.
[...] Boeing has already reported $1.6 billion in charges on its financial statements to pay for delays and cost overruns on the Starliner program. That figure will grow as the company will likely need to redesign some elements in the spacecraft's propulsion system to remedy the problems encountered on the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission. NASA has committed $5.1 billion to Boeing for the Starliner program, and the agency has already paid out most of that funding.
[...] don't count on another Starliner crew flight next year. NASA will have to continue leaning on SpaceX, which has shown it is up to the task of launching long-duration crews to the space station every six months. The agency's goal from the start of the commercial crew program has been to fully certify SpaceX and Boeing for operational crew missions, allowing NASA to alternate between Crew Dragon and Starliner missions, with each company flying once per year.
[...] Some companies involved in commercial space stations are in direct competition with SpaceX. For example, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, has partnered with Boeing to ferry people to and from its proposed Orbital Reef space station using Starliner rather than SpaceX for the job.
But there are many open questions about when the first commercial space stations might be in orbit and the market outlook for these projects. In the end, with human lives at stake and a bottom line to worry about, the owners of a private space station will almost certainly go with the less expensive flight-proven vehicle to transport people to and from orbit.
NASA and its international partners haven't ruled out extending the life of the ISS beyond 2030. If that happens, Boeing's Starliner could be in the mix for more crew flights. However, once NASA and its partners give the "go" to nudge the ISS out of orbit, its fiery plunge through the atmosphere will not just be the coda to 30-plus years of space station operations, it may also mark the end of Boeing's foray into the realm of commercial human spaceflight... (MORE - missing details)
Aug 25, 2024 01:40 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 25, 2024 02:36 AM by Yazata.)
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