NASA and Boeing strongly disagreed about the safety of the Boeing Starliner.
Boeing was convinced that the Starliner was in good enough condition to bring the astronauts home, and NASA strongly disagreed. NASA thought that Boeing was being wildly irresponsible.
NASA decided to overrule Boeing and have Elon Musk’s Space X Crew Dragon bring the two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, back in February.
There are five more ISS crewed missions scheduled from 2025 to early 2027. The Space station should be retired in 2031-2032.
Any issues on the unmanned return of Starliner will definitely mean the end of Starliner.
Getting the Boeing Starliner certified for manned usage seems like a 2026 timeline at the earliest. All of the costs getting to certification will be paid by Boeing. NASA would pay Boeing about $360 million for each four person flight. If Boeing only gets to fly three manned flights from 2027-2030, then the likely certification costs will prevent Boeing from making profits while the ISS exists. Boeing will not be able to recover about $2 billion in extra costs beyond the $4.2 billion fixed price contract.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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How dumb are Boeing and NASA? Look at their stupidity, the first two trial space shots of the Starliner failed. The first one blew up, the second one had hydrogen leaks, thrusters problems, and trouble docking to the space station. With a 100 percent fail rate so far, so for the third flight they figured oh it is safe, let us send people up in it. Even on the launch pad there was a hydrogen leak, yet they launched it. You would think NASA and Boeing would sense to do at least ten different successful launches in a row before putting people on it risking their lives in a death trap