Boeing's Starliner

[darthgently]

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[mikegarrison]

I would not be surprised if Starliner never flies again.

Boeing is bleeding cash, just came off of a massive strike, and is laying off something like 10% of their workforce. Meanwhile NASA has clearly signaled that they don't trust Starliner.

The Starliner program is a net money-loser for Boeing, and I don't see much reason why they would continue to pay for it. I especially suspect they will not be willing to pay a single dime to fly yet another orbital flight test.

[monophonic]

16 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

The Starliner program is a net money-loser for Boeing, and I don't see much reason why they would continue to pay for it. I especially suspect they will not be willing to pay a single dime to fly yet another orbital flight test.

All it comes down to is the non-delivery clauses in the commercial crew contract. Boeing will go whichever way costs less, whether that is pushing through with the currently contracted launches, or canceling Starliner and paying whatever fines they must. Now I do not know what sort of penalty clauses the contract includes, so it very well may be the cheaper option to break it. Even free, knowing how some governement contracts in my country are...

[mikegarrison]

At the time that NASA chose to not fly the crew back on Starliner, despite Boeing declaring that the return flight was safe (and of of course it did safely land), NASA effectively signaled that Starliner was always going to be nothing but a hopefully-unneeded backup to Dragon.

Boeing at the time said they would continue with the program, but that was before they lost an estimated $5B due to a strike by the IAM machinists. And while I hate to get into US politics, it's unavoidable as a real part of this discussion, due to the fact that the incoming administration has obvious ties to Musk and SpaceX.

I'm not sure I see a political path for NASA to declare that no further flight testing is necessary, when they themselves chose to not have the astronauts fly back on the Starliner. But the flight testing is coming from Boeing's pockets, not NASA, and I see no path to Boeing paying for another flight test. So would a Trump-Administration NASA pay for another orbital flight test of a Starliner that they apparently don't trust and don't want and is a competitor to Dragon?

And since all remaining launches of the Atlas V are already sold, would there be a market to sell released Starliner launch slots to other Atlas V customers?

Edited Thursday at 07:53 PM by mikegarrison
spelling

[tater]

It's a fixed price contract, if NASA requires another flight, then Boeing would have to eat it—that's the whole point of "fixed price." It's not like the current admin has been having NASA throw extra money at them, I don't think who is NASA Admin matters here, but so I agree there's no way for them to bail out Boeing here without it becoming political. I think the Atlas launches would be easily sold, heck, Amazon would probably buy them all, they need to move fast or Kuiper is DOA (do they get an extension if they don't launch half by mid 2026, or is whatever they have up all they get? (personally I think there's no possible way at this point sans making SpaceX an offer to sell them a couple hundred launches in the next 2 years so good they'd stop launching starlinks).

I wonder of buying Starliner would help BO at all? It has problems, but I think it can be fixed, the question is would a clean sheet be better/faster for BO than buying Starliner?

[mikegarrison]

33 minutes ago, tater said:

I wonder of buying Starliner would help BO at all? It has problems, but I think it can be fixed

Its biggest problem right now is not having a customer who wants it. I'm not sure that can be fixed. "Orbital Reef" might want it, except oh look, they have their own crew vehicle in mind.

It is a program risk for NASA to only have one non-Russian option for flying to the ISS, but if they really were worried about that, then they wouldn't have pulled the plug on the Starliner OFT crew return. Dual option procurement always sounds like a great idea to government agencies when they decide to try it, but except in wartime when they simply have no other choice, they never seem to actually like dealing with the realities of it.

Edited November 14 by mikegarrison

[tater]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

It is a program risk for NASA to only have one non-Russian option for flying to the ISS, but if they really were worried about that, then they wouldn't have pulled the plug on the Starliner OFT crew return. Dual option procurement always sounds like a great idea to government agencies when they decide to try it, but except in wartime when they simply have no other choice, they never seem to actually like dealing with the realities of it.

The decision not to return the crew was a mistake I think (personally). If you want to talk politics in the most tangential way, I think they (DC Admin/Nelson) didn't want to be on the hook for a very public disaster in an election year. As I said, I was hearing from someone very involved in human spaceflight that it was not at all unanimous at NASA—went from people who were wanting to be super careful, to, "They're test pilots, they signed up for this, and Boeing says it's OK." (specific statement friend said involved testicular fortitude I think )

Note that Boeing had powerful incentives to not have a disaster, either—so I took them at their word on their risk assessment (and it worked fine as we saw).

Having 2 would indeed be better.

(I'm still using my starliner NASA Flight Operations mousepad, FWIW)

[Codraroll]

On 11/13/2024 at 8:18 PM, mikegarrison said:

I would not be surprised if Starliner never flies again.

Boeing is bleeding cash, just came off of a massive strike, and is laying off something like 10% of their workforce. Meanwhile NASA has clearly signaled that they don't trust Starliner.

The Starliner program is a net money-loser for Boeing, and I don't see much reason why they would continue to pay for it. I especially suspect they will not be willing to pay a single dime to fly yet another orbital flight test.

It could potentially get a lifeline if several or all of the planned space stations end up being built, which might create demand for more crew capsules than SpaceX can operate alone. But if ISS is the only destination it can serve, and the flights left to fly there are finite in number and already contracted, then there isn't much financial sense left in certifying it.

But hey, at least it will probably get to share its fate with Soyuz, for much the same reasons, just getting there a few years earlier.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

But hey, at least it will probably get to share its fate with Soyuz, for much the same reasons, just getting there a few years earlier.

The fate of flying for 50 years.

Boeing CST-100 Starliner will be still flying in 2070s!

[Codraroll]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The fate of flying for 50 years.

Boeing CST-100 Starliner will be still flying in 2070s!

Fate, not legacy. Both will presumably stop flying because of a lack of customers and/or meaningful destinations to go, after the ISS is decomissioned.

[Lisias]

29 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Fate, not legacy. Both will presumably stop flying because of a lack of customers and/or meaningful destinations to go, after the ISS is decomissioned.

But, yet, only one of them was profitable. Ironically enough, exactly the capitalist one is going south in a way we didn't see since the collapse of the USSR.

Something to think about.

Edited Saturday at 12:07 PM by Lisias
URSS -> PT-BR ; USSR -> EN-US

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

Fate, not legacy. Both will presumably stop flying because of a lack of customers and/or meaningful destinations to go, after the ISS is decomissioned.

Nah, Soyuz is gonna be around forever. When we build the first warp drive ship, crew are going to launch to it on a Soyuz.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Both will presumably stop flying because of a lack of customers

Soyuz doesn't depend on customers, it's a government project, not a commercial one.

Like an aircraft carrier doesn't depend on plane passengers.

2 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Nah, Soyuz is gonna be around forever. When we build the first warp drive ship, crew are going to launch to it on a Soyuz.

With immortal SQLite onboard.

3 hours ago, Codraroll said:

after the ISS is decomissioned.

The first orbital stations designed to be visited by Soyuz were 7K-R/7K-S based on Soyuz. It's self-sufficient. It's like a meme virus.

P.S.

Unlike the projected orbital stations for CST-100, the CST-100 is already alive and proven.

Edited Saturday at 03:24 PM by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Soyuz doesn't depend on customers, it's a government project, not a commercial one.

Like an aircraft carrier doesn't depend on plane passengers.

Governments retire aircraft carriers when they decide they are too expensive to keep in operation. Governments don't have unlimited budgets. It is quite clear that Russia has been subsidizing the cost of the Soyuz by taking paying passengers (both private and from other governments).

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Governments retire aircraft carriers when they decide they are too expensive to keep in operation. Governments don't have unlimited budgets. It is quite clear that Russia has been subsidizing the cost of the Soyuz by taking paying passengers (both private and from other governments).

It's also quite clear that the Soyuzes, CST-100, 737MAX, Orion, etc. costs are costs of declared safety, not of the hardware.

The former is more volatile than the latter.