NASA’s chief executive suggests that Boeing’s Starliner will now be a decade late

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has classified the 2024 Starliner flight crew as an airplane. “Type A” error in February, admitting that the test flight was a serious failure. Two of NASA’s top astronauts resigned that month.

The director general also said that “the lack of clarity in NASA’s requirements and the delay of the wrong teams prevented the resolution of the CFT issues.”

While approving NASA’s proposal to carry only cargo on the next Starliner mission, the director general wrote that a flight without astronauts would not meet all of the agency’s certifications. It also means that NASA will have to buy more space shuttles to fulfill the missions that Starliner-1 would have provided in the first place. This will cost about $300 million.

“This proposal increases NASA’s cost to keep the ISS operational, adds to ongoing delays in certifying Starliner and reduces the number of aircraft NASA has under the (Commercial Crew agreement),” the inspector general wrote.

There are other costs, too. NASA paid SpaceX $17 million to speed up Crew Dragon flights to fill the gap left by the Starliner delay. The executive director also questioned the $128 million in payments to Boeing starting in 2019 to fly the future Starliner-3, “a project that is not guaranteed.”

When NASA and Boeing are ready for the Starliner to return, Boeing must find a place in the United Launch Alliance system to fly the Starliner-1 mission on the Atlas V rocket. NASA must also join the Starliner-1 in the busy group of missions coming and going to the ISS.

“In addition, Boeing is facing other logistical challenges, including availability, docking on the ISS and crew training time,” the official said. “As a result, human test certificates may be delayed until 2027, leaving a narrow window to provide flights until 2030, the end of the operational life of the ISS.”