Will NASA give up on Starliner after its present contracts are completed?
According to an article today at Ars Technica, there are indications that NASA will not buy any further flights of Boeing’s Starliner capsule after it finally completes its present three-launch contract.
NASA hasn’t decided if it will require Boeing to launch another test flight before formally certifying Starliner for operational missions. If Starliner performs flawlessly after undocking and successfully lands this weekend, perhaps NASA engineers can convince themselves Starliner is good to go for crew rotation flights once Boeing resolves the thruster problems and helium leaks.
In any event, the schedule for launching an operational Starliner crew flight in less than a year seems improbable. Aside from the decision on another test flight, the agency also must decide whether it will order any more operational Starliner missions from Boeing. These “post-certification missions” will transport crews of four astronauts between Earth and the ISS, orbiting roughly 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the planet.
NASA has only given Boeing the “Authority To Proceed” for three of its six potential operational Starliner missions.
Apparently NASA has not decided whether to commit to any more Starliner operational manned flights behind those first three.
There are obvious good reasons for NASA’s hesitancy, most of which center on Boeing and its inability to get Starliner flying without technical problems. One that isn’t as obvious however is ISS itself. Boeing has taken so long in getting Starliner flying that the end of ISS in 2030 is now looming. There are only so many manned flights that NASA needs to buy before the station is decommissioned. Afterward the agency will still need to hire ferrying services to the new privately owned stations, but it is too far in the future to consider either SpaceX or Boeing for those decisions.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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According to an article today at Ars Technica, there are indications that NASA will not buy any further flights of Boeing’s Starliner capsule after it finally completes its present three-launch contract.
NASA hasn’t decided if it will require Boeing to launch another test flight before formally certifying Starliner for operational missions. If Starliner performs flawlessly after undocking and successfully lands this weekend, perhaps NASA engineers can convince themselves Starliner is good to go for crew rotation flights once Boeing resolves the thruster problems and helium leaks.
In any event, the schedule for launching an operational Starliner crew flight in less than a year seems improbable. Aside from the decision on another test flight, the agency also must decide whether it will order any more operational Starliner missions from Boeing. These “post-certification missions” will transport crews of four astronauts between Earth and the ISS, orbiting roughly 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the planet.
NASA has only given Boeing the “Authority To Proceed” for three of its six potential operational Starliner missions.
Apparently NASA has not decided whether to commit to any more Starliner operational manned flights behind those first three.
There are obvious good reasons for NASA’s hesitancy, most of which center on Boeing and its inability to get Starliner flying without technical problems. One that isn’t as obvious however is ISS itself. Boeing has taken so long in getting Starliner flying that the end of ISS in 2030 is now looming. There are only so many manned flights that NASA needs to buy before the station is decommissioned. Afterward the agency will still need to hire ferrying services to the new privately owned stations, but it is too far in the future to consider either SpaceX or Boeing for those decisions.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I believe it is not a question of if NASA will cease using Starliner, but when. One of the possible reasons for continuing is if some Congress critter (House or Senate) insists upon funding it. Since Cost Plus contracts are no more, it will take directed funding to continue the NASA jobs program. Private space will continue to innovate, while Big Space plods along. If any human again enters the Starliner capsule, I hope it is just for simulation. Space exploration and rocketry have enough inherent danger without the government leviathan mucking things up.
Here’s a question, and one that I pose not to further any point of view:
Will the people of the United States give up on **NASA**?
The question came to mind while contemplating the launch race standings Bob provided in another article today.
Obviously, NASA was not mentioned in the standings figures provided. There are reasons for that, of course, and one that comes to MY mind is that NASA does not have commercial interests which must be supported with frequent launches. NASA has a different mission, one that is supposedly more focused on science and space exploration.
Just a conversation starter!
F,
The potential of the U.S. public “giving up” on NASA is a question that seems to me to assume a certain frame of reference that, I would argue, is already invalid and getting to be more so by the day. Simply put, NASA’s Moon Race-era situation of being “the only game in town” has been incrementally passing into history for more than a decade. NASA retains some importance anent U.S.-based space activities, to be sure, but it has been losing “market share” for quite awhile and that process is, if anything, accelerating.
Even now, American stature in terms of space activities is much more a function of what SpaceX is doing than of what NASA is doing. And small wonder. SpaceX’s payroll is now at least 3/4 that of NASA and SpaceX, as an organization, operates far more efficiently. With more and more private sector space players now at the table, NASA’s significance as a factor in American space know-how and accomplishment can only continue to diminish as a fraction of the whole. So, in the future, the American public’s experience of American space-related activity will cease being mostly reading about some taxpayer-funded NASA project and more about everyday use of things like LEO broadband Internet connectivity in rural and wilderness areas and the literally universal availability of mobile phone “dial tone” in the same sorts of places.
Nor will actual space exploration feature a lead role for NASA only a few years hence. The NASA Artemis architecture is as unsustainable, long-term, as was the Apollo architecture that is its direct ancestor. The SpaceX lunar access architecture, which will emerge during the remainder of this decade, will allow a far higher cadence of operations at vastly lower cost. It will, accordingly, dominate until, and unless, some newer player can replace SpaceX as king of that particular hill.
And human exploration/settlement of Mars is going to be pretty much an all-SpaceX show even in the very early going. NASA has no Mars human exploration architecture worthy of the name. So if it wants to see its logo on human-crewed Mars ships it will have to pony up some sponsorship money just like all of the other companies/governments/organizations that I think will be willing to help make Elon’s early Mars rockets look like NASCAR racers.
Dick,
You made me think of Ricky Bobby. ;)
https://tenor.com/view/ricky-bobby-will-ferell-if-youre-not-first-you-are-last-gif-3983540
F asked: “Will the people of the United States give up on **NASA**? The question came to mind while contemplating the launch race standings Bob provided in another article today. Obviously, NASA was not mentioned in the standings figures provided.”
I’m not sure that it matters whether We the People give up on NASA. What matters is whether Congress gives up on it. Congress funds NASA, which is why the agency continues to work on obsolete projects: they are Congress’s pet projects.
What really matters is that commercial space is funded not by government but by We the People in groups we call companies. Commercial America will fund our commercial space companies.
NASA is not in the standings, because it only has the one rocket to launch, but it still launches several satellites and deep space probes on (mostly) American rockets.
What will really drive commercial space operations is the coming manufacturing in space. Many materials and products will soon be made in space rather than here on Earth. NASA has focused on research and has not been open to commercial manufacturing, and we earthlings have missed out on many advancements and benefits because of that reluctance on government’s part. The near future should see a tremendous boom in the use of space for earthly benefits. NASA will continue to not be much of a part of this, although they may continue some research into the kinds of manufacturing that can be accomplished in space. NASA will also continue its own explorations, although these probes may mostly be made by commercial space companies.
As everyone becomes excited over the space materials and medicines that become available, NASA will likely seem less like the advanced technology engine that it has been, relinquishing this reputation to the companies that provide the public with the new revolutionary products from space. Even SpaceX may come to seem like a low-tech company, when compared to the space manufacturers.
An interesting question arose in my head. Kind of a thought experiment.
These new commercial stations that (we hope) are coming soon are there to provide lab space in orbit.
Will NASA ask for a module to government specs? Will it be leased in the same fashion that the Federal Government leases space for offices around the country, as needed.
Or will they “buy it” even though it is part of a larger station, and treat is like a government owned building or facility.
Maybe go bigger and commission an entire station, but commercially built, through the GSA, so would be like an Ames, or Marshal, other NASA center.
Having worked with US Gov contracting briefly (from the GOV side), these are things that pop into my head.
There is a quiet reason Lockhead is building its own station modules.
They will be ready when the ISS is decommissioned.
Who will they lobby?
“Will NASA give up on Starliner after its present contracts are completed?”
I think the answer depends upon whether Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, can turn around the company and improve the quality of its engineering and manufacturing departments. I suspect that he will have to do a lot of management changes, too. Boeing did its best work back when “work together” was the guiding principle. Then their guiding principle changed to “move management away from where the work is done,” and everything quickly went downhill from there. It has been half a decade since NASA declared that Boeing cannot bid on new contracts with the agency; moving the headquarters to DC did not help (and it shouldn’t have). This ban on bids shows that NASA lacks faith in the company’s future ability to perform engineering projects. NASA is also having trouble with Bechtel on the SLS launch tower, and the entire management of SLS on NASA’s part shows that NASA is having its own managerial problems.
The decision to return Starliner unmanned bodes ill for the future of Starliner. Is there any greater sign of a lack of faith in a spacecraft? On the other hand, during their turn at the press conferences the engineers seemed to think that it was safe for the astronauts to return, and this opinion of theirs obviously continued, otherwise why would there have been all those weeks of political hand wringing over the decision and why the lack of engineering representation at the later press conferences? If there were an engineering reason for returning unmanned, then they would have told us instead of using as their excuse, ‘how would it look if something went wrong?’ Based upon that criterion, there were no conditions at all in which Starliner could possibly have returned with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, because — as the NASA managers said in their press conference — space is risky, and NASA’s managers bravely decided to take no risks whatsoever related to Starliner. NASA has purposefully ruined Starliner’s reputation in the most public and terrible way possible. No wonder Stephen Clark at Ars Technica is questioning NASA’s future intentions.
Clark reports that Boeing can still make $1.9 billion on the remaining contract (six flights, not the Authorized To Proceed three), but if it will still cost Boeing more than that to fulfill its obligations, then the company will be less than enthusiastic to do so. A second question to ask is whether Boeing will give up on Starliner. It looks like their valves are still in development, but maybe the problem is in the way the thrusters are packaged and a change there fixes everything. If the former, maybe Boeing will abandon Starliner, but if the latter, maybe Starliner will perform well and it will succeed. (By the way, Tesla had a quality problem early in its existence, resulting in Musk making quality a high priority in all his companies. Can Ortberg do the same at Boeing?)
The good news is that NASA hasn’t suggested that they will charge Boeing for the two unused Dragon seats (half the $200 million-ish that SpaceX charges) being used to “rescue” the “stranded” astronauts, so Boeing does not have to add that to their losses on Starliner. It was, after all, an emotional political decision on NASA’s part, not a technical decision related to Starliner’s troubles, so it would be unfair to charge Boeing, not the NASA is being fair to the company.
NASA said that they wanted redundancy with their manned space providers, but their actions show a different reality. The agency has been more than willing to do all it can to stifle Boeing’s entry into commercial space. With customers like NASA, who needs enemies. Maybe F is right and We the People should give up on NASA.