Boeing Is Losing the New Space Race

Tomorrow, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, a Boeing-built spacecraft is set to blast off toward the International Space Station, carrying a human crew for the first time. The astronauts have been in preflight quarantine, getting some extra practice for the historic ride through flight simulations. The rocket stands tall on the launchpad, with the spacecraft, Starliner, perched on top. The weather forecast looks nearly perfect.

This might be more exciting if we hadn’t seen it all before. Boeing’s first crewed launch was originally supposed to happen three weeks ago. The astronauts donned new Boeing-blue spacesuits, said goodbye to their loved ones, and strapped into a capsule perched on a rocket humming with fuel. Then a valve on the rocket malfunctioned, and the launch was called off and rescheduled. Then engineers discovered a small helium leak within Starliner itself. While analyzing the leak, engineers stumbled upon a “design vulnerability” in the spacecraft’s propulsion system, further delaying the test flight. It’s surreal to imagine that this spacecraft might actually get off the ground tomorrow—not only because of the recent trouble, but because these problems are just the latest in a string of issues.

Even if Starliner flies tomorrow, Boeing’s track record with this kind of spaceflight has so far proved spotty at best. That’s concerning because actual people are getting into Starliner tomorrow to jet off to the ISS. But the company’s record also matters because every Boeing misstep leaves the United States ever more reliant on its rival company, SpaceX, and its CEO, Elon Musk, to transport its astronaut to space. Boeing doesn’t need to be the most groundbreaking or exciting American aerospace company to fulfill its duty to NASA. It merely needs to be a reliable transportation provider for America’s astronaut corps. And with this flight, it must prove that Starliner can simply work.

In 2011, after three decades of service, 135 missions, and two deadly disasters, America’s venerated fleet of space shuttles went into permanent retirement. But the country still needed a way to send its astronauts to the International Space Station, which demands constant staffing. So NASA turned to the private sector for help. It hired two companies—one young and inventive, the other established and staid—to develop new rides for its commuting spacefarers. SpaceX brought its first duo of astronauts to the ISS in the spring of 2020, in the thick of the pandemic. Since then, SpaceX has been consistently transporting four-person crews to the station, inside the company’s Dragon spacecraft and on its Falcon 9 rocket.

[Read: SpaceX’s riskiest business]

And Boeing … Well, last year, NASA’s second-in-command, Pam Melroy, told The Washington Post that Boeing’s inability to cross over into operational Starliner flights was "existential." In addition to the most recent round of software glitches and faulty hardware, Starliner has suffered repeated complications that have set it several years behind schedule. Boeing and SpaceX started out at roughly the same pace, both launching their respective new astronaut capsule to the ISS for the first time in 2019. But whereas SpaceX’s test went off without a hitch, Boeing’s was cut short. I still remember the eerie silence that settled over the press site at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, when officials realized that Starliner’s flight software had malfunctioned, and the spacecraft couldn’t reach the space station. Then, as Starliner made its way home, engineers discovered and fixed a software error that, if left uncorrected, could have resulted in a catastrophic failure.

Boeing didn’t complete a successful uncrewed mission until 2022, and has spent the past two years fixing still more issues. Every new space vehicle turns up problems for manufacturers to troubleshoot and iron out, and delays are common in the industry. But Boeing’s struggles have only compounded in recent weeks, when engineers made concerning discoveries about Starliner after NASA and Boeing officials had determined that the spacecraft was finally ready to fly.

Technicians have since replaced the wonky valve on the rocket, a frequently used vehicle from the manufacturer United Launch Alliance. Officials have decided not to plug the helium leak, determining that it doesn’t pose a safety hazard. An analysis of the propulsion system’s design vulnerability on Starliner determined that it could prevent the spacecraft from carrying out the maneuvers necessary to return to Earth, but only under rare circumstances. Engineers have also brainstormed several temporary solutions to the latter. Boeing officials said they’ll apply a permanent fix to later Starliner flights, but for now, the teams have decided the spacecraft is fine to launch as is.

At a press conference last week, Mark Nappi, the manager of Boeing’s commercial-spaceflight program, said that although his team had missed the design weakness, he wasn’t concerned about Boeing’s process for determining flight readiness. "Hardware issues or hardware failures are just part of our business," Nappi said. "They are going to occur as we do launch preps; they’re going to occur in flight." Uncovering anomalies is indeed a natural part of the spaceflight industry. But such reasoning might not sound reassuring to the public. (Earlier today, a Boeing spokesperson told me that the company has no additional comment on the latest issues and pointed to Nappi’s recent remarks.)

All of this drama is unfolding while Boeing is under intense scrutiny for other recent events: this year’s infamous panel-blowing-off-the-plane-mid-flight incident and two fatal crashes several years before that. The company’s air and space divisions are two separate entities, and air travel and spaceflight are, of course, enormously different experiences. Starliner staff has NASA personnel watching over their shoulders, especially after the space agency admitted in 2020 that its oversight had previously been "insufficient." But the departments are part of the same embattled company, which faces multiple government investigations and the loss of its CEO amid the ongoing safety crisis. With every delay and bad surprise, the space part of Boeing will have a harder time convincing the government and the public that it’s the more capable, responsible sibling.

[Jerry Useem: Boeing and the dark age of American manufacturing]

Boeing is supposed to make six regular-service flights for NASA in the coming years. In so doing, it would help fulfill the agency’s desire to have more than one form of astronaut transportation in operation. NASA leaders have touted competition among contractors as a way to make spaceflight cheaper, but they also have more pressing motivators than cost. If SpaceX, the agency’s current sole provider, has to suddenly ground its spaceships, NASA would have to consider turning to Russia for rides again. This arrangement brought NASA through the post-shuttle years from 2011 to 2020, but some members of Congress have always resented the arrangement.

Now NASA has once again deemed Boeing ready to attempt a crewed Starliner flight, and is projecting a fairly calm attitude about Starliner’s latest round of problems. When asked whether NASA was concerned that the issues hadn’t been found sooner, leaders emphasized that the inaugural crewed mission is a test flight. In fact, all of the 135 flights the space shuttles made could be considered test flights, "because we learned something on every single one of those flights," Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, said at the press conference last week. More than half a century in, spaceflight remains a dangerous production. By informally labeling every mission a test flight, NASA risks diminishing the importance of accountability for problems that arise, especially in the aftermath of a harrowing or even deadly event.

Tomorrow’s launch, if it happens, will mark only the beginning of Boeing’s high-stakes demonstration. Starliner must deliver the astronauts assigned to it—the former military pilots Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams—to the space station, protect them during a fiery atmospheric reentry, and land them in the New Mexico desert. In a recent post about Wilmore and Williams on X, Chris Hadfield, a retired Canadian astronaut who flew on two shuttle missions, wrote, “We’ve never been totally ready for launch—just need to convince ourselves we’re ready enough.” Perhaps only someone who has flown to space can say the quiet part out loud.