NASA/Boeing: More Starliner ground engine tests throughout 2025; Next flight likely in 2026
Starliner docked to ISS.
According to a press release from NASA late yesterday, both the agency and Boeing will spend most of the rest of this year doing additional Starliner static fire engine tests of thruster redesigns before considering another flight of the capsule to ISS.
NASA and Boeing are working to finalize the scope and timelines for various propulsion system test campaigns and analysis that is targeted throughout the spring and summer. Testing at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico will include integrated firing of key Starliner thrusters within a single service module doghouse to validate detailed thermal models and inform potential propulsion and spacecraft thermal protection system upgrades, as well as operational solutions for future flights. These solutions include adding thermal barriers within the doghouse to better regulate temperatures and changing the thruster pulse profiles in flight to prevent overheating. Meanwhile, teams are continuing testing of new helium system seal options to mitigate the risk of future leaks.
“Once we get through these planned test campaigns, we will have a better idea of when we can go fly the next Boeing flight,” said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “We’ll continue to work through certification toward the end of this year and then go figure out where Starliner fits best in the schedule for the International Space Station and its crew and cargo missions. It is likely to be in the timeframe of late this calendar year or early next year for the next Starliner flight.”
The release indicated that the goal is to get the capsule certified prior to the next flight so that it can carry a crew on a fully operational mission. The release however left open the option that this next ISS flight might instead be an unmanned cargo mission. The announcement said nothing about who will pay for this flight. Under Boeing’s fixed-priced contract, it should foot the bill, but no one should be surprised if NASA works a deal to funnel money Boeing’s way.
Meanwhile, the agency has changed some of the crew assignments for that first and long-delayed operational Starliner flight, switching astronaut Mike Fincke from that mission to the next Dragon mission to launch later this year. (I suspect Fincke wanted to fly again, and was tired of sitting on his hands waiting for Boeing to get Starliner working.)
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Starliner docked to ISS.
According to a press release from NASA late yesterday, both the agency and Boeing will spend most of the rest of this year doing additional Starliner static fire engine tests of thruster redesigns before considering another flight of the capsule to ISS.
NASA and Boeing are working to finalize the scope and timelines for various propulsion system test campaigns and analysis that is targeted throughout the spring and summer. Testing at White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico will include integrated firing of key Starliner thrusters within a single service module doghouse to validate detailed thermal models and inform potential propulsion and spacecraft thermal protection system upgrades, as well as operational solutions for future flights. These solutions include adding thermal barriers within the doghouse to better regulate temperatures and changing the thruster pulse profiles in flight to prevent overheating. Meanwhile, teams are continuing testing of new helium system seal options to mitigate the risk of future leaks.
“Once we get through these planned test campaigns, we will have a better idea of when we can go fly the next Boeing flight,” said Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “We’ll continue to work through certification toward the end of this year and then go figure out where Starliner fits best in the schedule for the International Space Station and its crew and cargo missions. It is likely to be in the timeframe of late this calendar year or early next year for the next Starliner flight.”
The release indicated that the goal is to get the capsule certified prior to the next flight so that it can carry a crew on a fully operational mission. The release however left open the option that this next ISS flight might instead be an unmanned cargo mission. The announcement said nothing about who will pay for this flight. Under Boeing’s fixed-priced contract, it should foot the bill, but no one should be surprised if NASA works a deal to funnel money Boeing’s way.
Meanwhile, the agency has changed some of the crew assignments for that first and long-delayed operational Starliner flight, switching astronaut Mike Fincke from that mission to the next Dragon mission to launch later this year. (I suspect Fincke wanted to fly again, and was tired of sitting on his hands waiting for Boeing to get Starliner working.)
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Can you say Lack of urgency? I thought you could.
If this were a serious effort, answers should have been locked in months ago instead of months from now.
“I suspect Fincke wanted to fly again, and was tired of sitting on his hands waiting for Boeing to get Starliner working.”
And I also wouldn’t be surprised if Finke wanted to make sure he could fly more than one last time.
In the end, if it flies or not, Boeing will announce that this is evidence that NASA really needs to go back to cost plus contracting.
(In my humble, and cynical opinion).
If past such estimates are any guide, these new estimates of a late 2025 or early 2026 next Starliner flight – with or without crew TBD – can probably be safely marked up by at least a year. SpaceX has just launched its 10th NASA Commercial Crew mission to the ISS and will certainly launch the 11th before Starliner flies again. My guess now is that it will also launch number 12 before we see another Starliner flight – of whatever sort – and the odds are passable that we might even see a 13th for SpaceX pre-Starliner’s next.
I feel like summer 2026 is a minimum NET date at this point, honestly. Probably, an optimistic one!
NASA certainly….does not seem to be in a hurry to bring Starliner online, do they? Obviously, having a reliable, large and growing Dragon fleet takes a lot of the pressure off.
And honestly, I think they share the growing sense that the advantage of having Starliner in operation is quite marginal for NASA. They don’t need it for price competition — it was always more expensive, and anyway NASA has bought all the Dragon flights it could need for ISS’s lifetime. Nor does it prove much redundancy value, either.
So what would a steelman case for Starliner look like now? The one obvious thing I can think of is that, if NASA really does mean to strongly push a vibrant economy in low earth orbit, one that includes multiple western space stations, then there could be an accelerant effect on capital and customers if there ends up being two American crew vehicles to reach these facilities, even if one is demonstrably inferior to the other. And maybe Starliner will be in someone else’s hands by then, too — someone able to iterate it into something more effective. In short, it may have most of what value it could have for the LEO economy that comes after ISS, rather than ISS itself.
Not saying I am fully persuaded, but it is something I think about.
Richard M: Your analysis, while thoughtful, I think is making a fundamental error. This is a fixed-price contract with Boeing, who is entirely in charge of the pace of operations. NASA might want it to go faster, or NASA might not care, but it will be entirely up to Boeing’s management how quickly things get done.
So far Boeing’s management in this whole project has shown itself to be very subpar. They allow numerous mistakes — some blatantly absurd like the use of flammable tape in the capsule — while applying no pressure on anyone to move things along. At the pace the company is setting, Starliner won’t really be operational until the last two or three years of ISS’s life, when there will be hardly any flights left for NASA to buy.
NASA meanwhile appears to so far be all-in on fostering a vibrant commercial space industry, as demonstrated by its continuing support of the lunar lander program. Its problem is that too many of America’s aerospace companies are like Boeing, bloated, slow, inefficient, and badly run. The hope is to get the new companies going to replace these dinosaurs.
Hi Bob,
That is *legally* true. Politically, though…there are scenarios where Boeing could be pushed harder.
Of course, that comes at a price.
Imagine a scenario where Boeing had (God help us) actually succeeded in forcing a downselect to just Starliner in 2014. It does not take much imagination to project an inevitable trendline of Boeing finding ways over the succeeding years in converting the fixed cost contract into something looking more and more like a cost-plus contract. It would have maximum leverage over NASA.
Without Dragon out there, that would have left NASA in an increasingly awkward place, as the delays mounted. At some point, possibly even before February 2022, reliance on Russian transport to ISS becomes intolerable. The pressure would be on both NASA and Boeing to get Starliner operational. It would, of course, take more money. It would probably also see NASA accepting higher risk levels to make it happen. One could see Starliner getting into service sooner in this scenario. It would probably still be somewhat of a lemon even with a few billion extra in taxpayer dollars. It’s also possible that Starliner ends up killing astronauts, in which case ISS would be completely untenable.
But in our timeline…. Boeing plods along with Starliner fixes, and NASA does not seem willing to exert that sort of pressure. They seem unwilling to terminate the program, and they seem unwilling to lean hard on Boeing to move faster. Maybe it’s just one more decision that’s been punted to the new administration to sort out.
In any event, I was only attempting an exercise in thinking through what value Starliner *could* have, and giving it every benefit of the doubt for argument’s sake (because I would just as soon kill it at this point). But increasingly, I think that future could only be realized if a more competent space company took it over. I don’t think much of Boeing is salvageable at this point.