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Boeing has a decision to make: keep investing in Starliner, or cut the program now, and avoid having to do a bunch of rework to fix it plus at least one more te

by __d 2y ago

Boeing has a decision to make: keep investing in Starliner, or cut the program now, and avoid having to do a bunch of rework to fix it plus at least one more test flight (and possibly two?) on their own dime. It's not really clear (to me) how likely either of those outcomes is right now. IF they drop it, then I would expect NASA to run a new commercial crew program. They need redundancy, and they don't want to be running the development process themselves. Dream Chaser Space System (their crewed variant) is almost certainly the best-placed candidate to win an award from that program: they have an almost-flying cargo variant that was originally designed to be human rated, and existing plans to complete the crewed variant. SpaceX might get some money for Starship, although I would expect NASA to try to write the rules such that they're not eligible. While having two options from a single company is better than just one, a fully-independent option would be better. Blue Origin has some experience with the New Shepard capsule, and is working on their Blue Moon lander: I expect that they would cobble together a proposal, and perhaps between their previous experience in losing bids due to over-pricing, and NASA's experience with Starliner's fixed-price failure, the price might end up somewhere in the middle? Maybe Northrop-Grumman would propose a Cygnus-derived vehicle? It'd need a human-rated launcher -- Dream Chaser would likely be using Vulcan, and Falcon9 is a dependency on SpaceX. NG would probably like to use its own Antares 330 booster, but then they'd be running both a crew vehicle and a booster program which is a lot of money and risk. It's not entirely implausible that someone buys Starliner from Boeing, and attempts to complete the development (if Boeing gives up). Blue Origin is possibly the most likely candidate? They have Jeff's cash mountain, and a kinda compatible "old space" culture -- if Boeing is willing to sell it at a reasonable price, it's possibly a cheap way to get 80% of the way there? Given the results from this commercial crew round (a likely 50% success), funding two programs with the expectation of one success seems reasonable. Whether they are able to get commercial interest in a fixed-price award like last time is an open question, as is who might apply. Interesting times.

skissane 2y ago
> Boeing has a decision to make: keep investing in Starliner, or cut the program now They can't cut the program. They are contracted to NASA. If they try to bail out, they'll be breaching a major federal government contract, which could have serious negative consequences for their ability to win future federal contracts – not just NASA, but more importantly the Pentagon too. If Boeing really wants out, the only plausible way is they convince NASA management to cancel the contract. That way Boeing can officially claim that they performed adequately, and the cancellation was due to NASA's own decision, not their own failures.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  > If Boeing really wants out, the only plausible way is they convince NASA management to cancel the contract. That way Boeing can officially claim that they performed adequately, and the cancellation was due to NASA's own decision, not their own failures. Alternatively they could convince a judge that NASA was being unreasonable by not certifying and completing this flight, if this goes to court, which many federal contracting squabbles do.
  - skissane 2y ago
    That would be a very high risk move - significant chance a federal judge says “I refuse to second guess NASA’s own engineers on astronaut safety”. In the unlikely event they prevail at the District Court level, I doubt it would be held up on appeal. And if they lose, their reputation will be even more in tatters than it already is.

by __d 2y ago

skissane 2y ago

> Boeing has a decision to make: keep investing in Starliner, or cut the program now They can't cut the program. They are contracted to NASA. If they try to bail out, they'll be breaching a major federal government contract, which could have serious negative consequences for their ability to win future federal contracts – not just NASA, but more importantly the Pentagon too. If Boeing really wants out, the only plausible way is they convince NASA management to cancel the contract. That way Boeing can officially claim that they performed adequately, and the cancellation was due to NASA's own decision, not their own failures.

bpodgursky 2y ago
> If Boeing really wants out, the only plausible way is they convince NASA management to cancel the contract. That way Boeing can officially claim that they performed adequately, and the cancellation was due to NASA's own decision, not their own failures. Alternatively they could convince a judge that NASA was being unreasonable by not certifying and completing this flight, if this goes to court, which many federal contracting squabbles do.
- skissane 2y ago
  That would be a very high risk move - significant chance a federal judge says “I refuse to second guess NASA’s own engineers on astronaut safety”. In the unlikely event they prevail at the District Court level, I doubt it would be held up on appeal. And if they lose, their reputation will be even more in tatters than it already is.