NASA Nearly Bet It All on Boeing’s Troubled Starliner—Here’s Why That Changed

It’s hard to imagine a more stressful version of the Boeing Starliner saga, but an insider’s look into a fateful meeting that took place 10 years ago reveals that things could have been much worse.

NASA was reportedly considering going all in on Boeing, selecting the company’s Starliner as the only commercial spacecraft used to transport its astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS), according to an excerpt from the book Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age by Ars Technica’s Eric Berger.

In 2014, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program to develop spacecraft capable of carrying crew and cargo to the ISS. SpaceX excelled in its assignment; since November 2020, the company has transported eight crews to the orbiting space station. Meanwhile, while its counterpart had a disastrous first go at launching two NASA astronauts; on September 6, Boeing’s Starliner undocked from the ISS and returned to Earth, leaving its crew stranded due to multiple issues that deemed the spacecraft unfit to carry the astronauts back home.

Starliner launched to the ISS on June 5, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams. The spacecraft remained docked to the space station for three months as teams on the ground debated whether or not to return the crew on board the troubled spacecraft. During its ride to the ISS, five of the spacecraft’s thrusters failed and the spacecraft developed five helium leaks, one of which was identified prior to liftoff. Mission teams ran tests on the ground to try and identify the main issue behind the thruster glitch before ultimately deciding to return an uncrewed Starliner and bring back its crew on board SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.

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