An empty Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner touched down at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on September 6. The three months-late successful landing followed NASA officials’ decision that the spacecraft should return without Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, the two astronauts who travelled aboard it to the International Space Station in early June.
NASA picked both Boeing and its upstart rival at the time, SpaceX, a decade ago to transport US astronauts to and from the ISS. However, the former has yet to complete a successful crewed round trip. The company has also maintained a noticeable silence on the public front regarding the Starliner debate despite its capsule homecoming last week. Although officials from NASA convened as part of a standard post-landing briefing on early September 7 morning, Boeing executives caught more attention for all the wrong reasons owing to their conspicuous absence.
NBC News reported that Boeing reps last participated in a briefing about their spacecraft in late July when they addressed preliminary questions surrounding the faulty capsule’s hardware issues.
Boeing’s continued public silence raises questions
Ahead of last week’s press event at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, a NASA public advisory mentioned that two Boeing representatives – John Shannon and Mark Nappi – were expected to attend it. Au contraire, Eric Berger, a senior editor for Ars Technica, who was in attendance at the conference, later confirmed that chairs allotted for the Boeing officials were ultimately removed before the briefing picked up pace. As highlighted via his week-old X/Twitter post, NASA curtly responded, “You’ll have to ask them,” after he raised the issue with the US government agency.
Further addressing their absence during the briefing, Joel Montalbano, the deputy associate administrator of NASA’s space operations, said: “We did talk to Boeing before this. They deferred to NASA to represent the mission.”
Amid a limited streak of public statements, Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program manager and vice president, wrote on the company’s website, “I want to recognise the work the Starliner teams did to ensure a successful and safe undocking, deorbit, re-entry and landing. We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program.”
Boeing officials have prominently remained absent throughout new conferences in August, otherwise led by NASA officials.
Following NASA’s big decision on August 24 about enlisting SpaceX’s help for Williams and Wilmore’s rescue mission, Boeing briefly wrote on X: “We continue to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”
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NASA and Boeing’s purported rift
Later that month, the New York Post dropped a bombshell report, revealing that a NASA exec familiar with the “heated” meetings between the agency and Boeing over the Sunita Williams-Butch Wilmore return to Earth row had spoken out.
According to the officeholder, the NASA-Boeing relationship has already soured, and the latter “wasn’t happy” with the result. Meanwhile, the government agency purportedly internally slammed Boeing for “being wildly irresponsible,” alluding to its claims about the Starliner ensuring a safe ride home for the NASA astronauts.
Though not officially released to the public, the late August report also unveiled an internal mail disseminated by Mark Nappi, saying: “I know this is not the decision we had hoped for, but we stand ready to carry out the actions necessary to support NASA’s decision.” Maintaining a similar tone as the aforementioned X statement, the e-mail added, “The focus remains first and foremost on ensuring the safety of the crew and spacecraft. I have the utmost confidence in this team to prepare Starliner for a safe and successful uncrewed return with the same level of professionalism and determination as you did the first half of the mission.”
Could the Starliner debacle put an end to Boeing’s space program?
NASA has previously committed to being professionally associated with Boeing. However, the multinational corporation’s future ties with the government now appear muddy, considering the ISS is reportedly retiring in 2030.
Ron Epstein, an aerospace and defence analyst at Bank of America, also emphasized in a research note last month that “it’s unclear if or when the company will have another opportunity to bring astronauts to space.” Per The New York Times report, the expert added, “We would not be surprised if Boeing were to divest the manned spaceflight business.” The delayed space program has also proved exponentially costly, with extra costs being borne solely by Boeing, not NASA. “Starliner alone has suffered at least $1.5 billion in cost overruns, including $125 million in the first half of this year,” the outlet reported.
“Do they ultimately exit the program because it’s too complicated and because the other guy can do it better?” Melius Research analyst Robert Spingarn told Bloomberg. “It can happen.”
Even though Steve Stich, manager of the commercial crew program at NASA, declared the Starliner’s uncrewed touchdown a “bullseye landing,” adding that it would have accounted for a “safe, successful landing with the crew on board,” Boeing’s reputation has hit an all-time low. Its repeated disasters linked to the 737 Max plane have only piled up concerns. Present-day operations at Boeing have additionally taken a hit as roughly 33,000 workers walked off the job on Friday, marking their first strike since 2008, as a result of stagnant wages and downsizing of retirement and health care benefits.
