Boeing’s total losses due to Starliner now equal $1.5 billion
According to CNBC, the total losses for Boeing due to its on-going and persistent engineering problems flying its manned Starliner capsule now equal almost $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion as estimated yesterday.
Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year. The charges total $1.47 billion, according to its annual reports and the company’s most recent quarterly filing.
The annual losses have ranged from $57 million in 2018 to $489 million in 2019.
At this moment, the only way Boeing can make a profit on Starliner is to garner a lot of other tourist customers, outside NASA. The problem is that SpaceX’s already operational fleet of four manned Dragon capsules has captured that market, with a capsule and rocket that has demonstrated remarkable reliability. To convince others to fly on Starliner it will have to fly it a lot beforehand in order to convince others its problems have really been fixed. This will take time and money, which will only add to the red ink.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to CNBC, the total losses for Boeing due to its on-going and persistent engineering problems flying its manned Starliner capsule now equal almost $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion as estimated yesterday.
Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year. The charges total $1.47 billion, according to its annual reports and the company’s most recent quarterly filing.
The annual losses have ranged from $57 million in 2018 to $489 million in 2019.
At this moment, the only way Boeing can make a profit on Starliner is to garner a lot of other tourist customers, outside NASA. The problem is that SpaceX’s already operational fleet of four manned Dragon capsules has captured that market, with a capsule and rocket that has demonstrated remarkable reliability. To convince others to fly on Starliner it will have to fly it a lot beforehand in order to convince others its problems have really been fixed. This will take time and money, which will only add to the red ink.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
So if NASA gave Boeing $5 billion, and Boeing has lost $1.5 billion, that means their total expenditure is at $6.5 billion, and rising. That just boggles the mind. What in the world are they spending that much money doing?
David Eastman: NASA hasn’t given Boeing $5 billion. In fact, it probably hasn’t paid Boeing more than $1 billion on this contract. It is a fixed price contract that only makes payments when Boeing succeeds at certain milestones.
Boeing $1.5 billion loss is the extra money it has had to dole out to try to get Starliner flying (so far in vain). This money cuts into its expected profit from the full contract.
David Eastman,
When Boeing bid on the project, they figured out how much they thought it would cost, and since it was fixed price they added in some margin for error, then they added in a profit. To give some numbers, let’s assume they thought they would spend $3 billion, added a 50% margin to make it $4.5 billion, then added in a 10% profit, bringing the bid to just under $5 billion. With this assumption, they have now eaten up their entire margin, will still spend the $3 billion, and any other losses now eat into any profit that they hoped to make on the project.
As Robert noted, Boeing could have made more money by renting space on Starliner to private companies, individuals, or other countries’ space programs. SpaceX has already sold and flown four such missions, making somewhere around $3/4 billion over the amount contracted with NASA for the manned Dragon. Although it is hard to be correct with counterfactuals, Boeing can be assumed to have captured half that market, so they may have lost out on around $400 million that they might have made in addition, if the original test flight and Starliner itself had performed well. These delays are costing Boeing opportunities for additional business. It is almost certain that Dragon will have a fifth private non-NASA flight before Starliner’s first manned test flight.
It could be worse than that for the rest of us. It is possible that instead of four private flights by now, there could have been eight, four with Dragon and four with Starliner. Well, maybe not eight, because there aren’t enough docking ports on ISS for much more than the two private flights that already went there.
I’m not a holder of Boeing stocks.
Don’t care.
Boeing as a contributor to the national economy; salaries, families, etc., I don’t care
Tax dollars are involved. Some of them are mine. I don’t have to think kindly of folks wasteful of my monetary needs for my family.
Pox on their house.
I’m making money on SpaceX. My family smiles.