More Delays To The First Crewed Starliner Flight
Back when Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was first being developed, the company was aiming for the first crewed flight test to occur in 2017. Now 6 years later, this mission is still yet to happen, and new delays are being announced. Most recently, the launch scheduled for March 2024, was just delayed at least another month to no earlier than the middle of April 2024.
This joins a long list of recent delays that have pushed the launch back from early this year to the middle of 2024. Currently, Boeing is still working on fixing the crew capsule after discovering a few issues related to flammable tape and parachute safety margins. Once fixed, assuming no other issues are found, the spacecraft will launch two humans to the International Space Station before returning home.
Unfortunately for Boeing, these delays hurt the program in more ways than one. Besides charges adding up to over $1 billion from NASA, the company is also missing out on a lot of crew launch contracts that SpaceX by default is winning. Here I will go more in-depth into the new delay, current Starliner progress, what this means for SpaceX’s Dragon, and more.
Additional Delays
A few days ago on the 12th, in a press release from NASA, they announced the latest Starliner delay. Here they said, “The first crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft, named NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT), is planned for no earlier than mid-April. This was practically all the information provided as they didn’t give a reason for the delay.
Most recently, a few months ago in August, they had delayed the mission to March 2024. That delay was primarily because they needed quite a bit of time to fix the wiring and parachute problem. We can assume that this most recent delay to April is to give them more time to fix and test the spacecraft.
Not long ago the company discovered that a specific type of tape used on the spacecraft to protect wires from chafing was flammable. Specifically, although the tape is commonly used in spaceflight, the adhesive properties of the tape could present a flammability risk under certain conditions. Starting in May, NASA and Boeing began evaluating this material and the system’s overall wiring protection to confirm it is acceptable for crewed flight. This revealed that all the tape needed to be replaced which is quite the process.
As far as how this happened, when speaking at a teleconference, Steve Stitch, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program said, on the P2-13 tape, this is a tape that is widely used across the aerospace industry for many applications for protecting wires from abrasion. I would say from the NASA database, the entries in the database were a bit inconsistent relative to the flammability of that tape at various levels of oxygen concentration. So it was a bit confusing as to when it could be used and when it couldn’t” he said. Considering at one point the spacecraft was only weeks away from launching humans, this comment is slightly concerning.
In addition, around that same time, NASA and Boeing also started working to reassess Starliner’s parachute system margins based on new data reviews as part of the ongoing design certification process. In this case, the “soft links” in the parachutes were weaker than expected, preventing the overall parachute system from achieving the factor of safety required for crewed flights. “That has been redesigned by the team. They’re in the middle of testing that design,” Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, said back in August.
Even with the launch pushed back to April, there could end up being even more delays with how busy the ISS is expected to be. In the same teleconference, Mark Nappi, Boeing vice president and program manager for Starliner commented that Boeing will have to work with NASA on ISS schedules, as well as United Launch Alliance on Atlas 5 launch schedules, to set a date. “We’ll work that throughout the next several weeks and see where we can fit in, and then we’ll set a launch date,” he said. To add to these delays, they pointed out that around that time period is typically when Roscosmos performs crew rotations using its Soyuz spacecraft, which could limit CFT opportunities that month. “We have not taken the vehicle readiness and mapped it into when we can find a date” that works with both the station and ULA, he said. “That’s really the next step.” These delays are also causing concern for the first operational mission which is meant to happen after a successful demo flight.
It’s also important to point out that this first crewed mission is a test and the first actual crewed flight likely won’t happen until 2025 according to NASA. In other words, the delay of this first crewed test flight is also pushing back the official launch.
SpaceX Dragon
When NASA awarded $4.2 billion to Boeing, and $2.6 billion to SpaceX, one major goal was to have two companies capable of human launches who would compete and lower prices for the agency. Since these initial contracts went out, things have certainly not gone how the agency expected.
With SpaceX being the only option, NASA has continued to purchase rides to space using their spacecraft. These contracts are significant and something Boeing and the Starliner spacecraft need to win. For example, back in August, around the same time as Boeing announced delays to March of next year, SpaceX won a big contract. Specifically, at the time, NASA awarded five additional missions to SpaceX for crew transportation services to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. The contract modification brought the total missions for SpaceX to 14 and allows NASA to maintain an uninterrupted U.S. capability for human access to the space station until 2030, with two unique commercial crew industry partners.
In a statement, they said, “This is a firm fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract modification for the Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13, and Crew-14 flights. The value of this modification for all five missions and related mission services is $1,436,438,446. Ironically, by now, due to delays and setbacks, Boeing has received a nearly equivalent $1.5 billion but in charges from NASA.
Focusing back on the Dragon contract modification, the purchase includes ground, launch, in-orbit, and return and recovery operations, cargo transportation for each mission, and a lifeboat capability while docked to the International Space Station. They then said, “The period of performance runs through 2030 and brings the total CCtCap contract value with SpaceX to $4,927,306,350. This is money that Boeing and the Starliner program can’t continue to miss out on in the future. For the sake of the program, Boeing really needs to get Starliner certified and consistently transporting humans to the ISS and back.
Any more delays or complications will put even more pressure on the program and threaten its future. As of right now, they still are determined to get Starliner operating, and don’t plan on abandoning the program. John Shannon, the vice president of Boeing Exploration Systems, which has oversight of Starliner and the company’s space programs, said in an interview that despite the enormous costs, the company will not abandon the program.” He continued by saying, “For a government contract like that you just never see that kind of investment,” he said. “And trying to take the very top level view of it, it’s important, I think, to the country to have an American capability to fly crew. SpaceX is doing that now. We’ll be the second one” he said.
Although, while he said the company didn’t plan to abandon the spacecraft, he did somewhat question its future. Specifically, when asked whether Boeing plans to continue with the program long-term, he responded, “It’s a great question. And I wish I had the answer to it right now.”
Back in June, before NASA acquired 5 additional crewed flights from SpaceX, they issued a notice of intent. In a statement, they said, “Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 went very well and we hope to be able to certify the Starliner system in the near future. However, we will need additional missions from SpaceX to implement our strategy of having each commercial provider flying alternating missions once per year,” said Phil McAllister, director, commercial space at NASA. “Our goal has always been to have multiple providers for crewed transportation to the space station. SpaceX has been reliably flying two NASA crewed missions per year, and now we must backfill those flights to help safely meet the agency’s long-term needs.”
Not only that, but NASA anticipates a potential need to use any additional SpaceX flights as early as 2026 to ensure dissimilar redundancy, maintain safe space station operations, and allow each company to work through any unforeseen issues that could arise as private industry builds operational experience with these new systems. In one final quote, Steve Stich said at the time, “The recent success of Boeing’s uncrewed flight test is helping to solidify NASA’s long-term goals. It’s critical we complete Starliner’s development without undue schedule pressure while working to position both Boeing and SpaceX for sustainable operations in the years ahead” he said. Something we will have to keep up with in the next few months.
Conclusion
Boeing’s first crewed test flight was just delayed again to no earlier than mid April 2024. This follows a theme over the past few years as different complications have continued to push this spacecraft’s progress back. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.