Trevor Mahlman
In September 2009, Boeing announced that it would participate in NASA’s new commercial crew program. The aerospace industry leader pledged to bring his long experience in supporting the space agency and his experience in manned spaceflight to make the program a success.
“Boeing has a lot to offer NASA in this new field of commercial crew transportation services,” Keith Reiley, the Boeing program manager for the project, said at the time. “To demonstrate our commitment, we are prepared to make a substantial investment in research and development.”
This was a consistent moment for the new program, which lacked broad congressional support. The commercial initiative was only created because the Obama administration put $50 million into its American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for a new program.
In recent years, both of NASA’s top leaders in 2009 — former Administrator Charlie Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver — have pointed to Boeing’s participation in the commercial crew program as essential to its long-term success.
“Boeing being in the commercial crew program meant you got a lot more support from Congress because they often have a very robust lobbying program,” Garver said last year. “I was very happy when the traditional, big aerospace company Boeing made an offer. Because I think that was a tough decision. And I think when they look back, they wouldn’t do it again.”
Lack of investment
Boeing’s disturbing announcement on Thursday that it found two serious safety issues with its Starliner spacecraft within weeks of its first crewed flight — insufficiently strong parachute belts and hundreds of feet of flammable tape in the vehicle — raises further questions about the program’s viability .
To date, Boeing has deducted nearly $900 million in costs from its revenues for setbacks in Starliner’s development, and this latest delay, which will likely take at least six months to resolve, if not much longer, will undoubtedly drive those costs up . It’s hard to imagine Boeing ever making money off Starliner after nearly 14 years of commercial crew involvement.
Although Reiley said in 2009 that the company made a “substantial investment” in the development of Starliner, then known as CST-100, multiple sources told Ars that was not the case. Instead, Boeing “nickeled” the time engineers worked on Starliner for a long time. This was partly due to congressional underfunding of the commercial crew program, but also because Boeing did not want to put a skin in the game.
In retrospect, this has been a bad decision because, due to the fixed price of the contract with NASA, Boeing is largely responsible for cost overruns and losses due to continued delays. The company now essentially has three options, none of which are particularly attractive.
