Comment The return of Crew-9 from the International Space Station (ISS) in a Crew Dragon has raised the question of what the future holds for Boeing's Calamity Capsule, also known as the CST-100 Starliner.
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore had journeyed to the ISS on board the Boeing Starliner as part of the vehicle's first crewed test flight. It did not go well. While the duo managed to dock with the ISS, various concerns with Starliner – notably around the thrusters – ended with Williams and Wilmore becoming part of Crew-9 and Starliner returning to Earth empty.
More than six months later, the future of Starliner is unclear. During the post-splashdown news conference for Crew-9, the manager of NASA's commercial crew program, Steve Stich, said that Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, remained "committed to Starliner." However, longstanding problems dog the project.
Boeing has incurred enormous losses due to Starliner's difficulties. As of February's financial results, the company has bled over $2 billion, which is unlikely to stop until the spacecraft finally becomes operational.
It was all supposed to be so different a decade ago when NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX. Back then, Boeing was regarded as slightly ahead of SpaceX, and 2017 was set as the date for the first crewed flight.
As it turned out, SpaceX bested Boeing by several years. Back in 2020, it launched the first astronauts in a US-built spacecraft from American soil in almost a decade, and has since continued launching astronauts on both private flights and ISS crew rotations.
Things did not pan out so well for Boeing. It managed the first launch of the CST-100 Starliner in 2019 – without a crew – but it went badly wrong. A faulty mission elapsed timer meant the spacecraft thought it was further along in the mission than it actually was, so it burnt through its fuel trying to find a space station that wasn't there. More problems occurred at the separation of the spacecraft's service module (SM), which could have sent the SM bouncing off the Crew Module, among other issues.
The uncrewed test was successfully reflown, but more delays pushed the launch of a crew to 2024.
According to Stich, the problems seen on the first crewed mission are still being worked out. More testing is planned over the summer with some alternative seals to replace those that leaked.
Stich did not indicate whether NASA would repeat the crewed mission. He also did not confirm if the agency might prefer an uncrewed Starliner flight first to verify that the fixes have worked. This approach would reduce risk to astronauts and help avoid another extended stay like that of Williams and Wilmore if issues arise again.
The problem then becomes one of timing. Crew-11 is due to launch in the July-August time frame, with Crew-12 following around March 2026. Boeing has yet to share any updates – its last Starliner post was all about the landing of the uncrewed spacecraft last year, but getting operational in 2026 means only a few years of the ISS program will remain before a new destination is secured.
Thus there is a real chance that Boeing might throw in the towel in the coming months and extract itself from an increasingly expensive contract. Unlike with its Space Launch System work, the aerospace giant is on the hook for the ballooning Starliner costs.
For its part, NASA would like Boeing to succeed with Starliner. The agency is acutely aware that having to depend on a single vendor – SpaceX – for US transportation to and from the ISS is inherently risky. Having two vendors gives NASA the redundancy it craves. It could be argued that the Starliner woes underscore this concern.
Stich said that following the next Starliner flight, "we really need to get Boeing into a crewed rotation." He did not, however, give a date when that might happen. ®