On Thursday, May 19, just before 7 p.m. ET, Boeing (BA 2.64%) returned to space.
More specifically, Boeing began its return to crewed spaceflight, launching an unmanned CST-100 Starliner space capsule atop an Atlas V rocket (operated by its joint venture with Lockheed Martin) en route to the International Space Station (ISS). It was one final test before Boeing gets the go-ahead from NASA to attempt a crewed mission to ISS.
One day later, Boeing's Starliner successfully docked with ISS at 8:28 p.m. ET.
Six days after that, on May 26, Starliner returned to Earth, parachuting down to land at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 6:49 p.m. ET -- and securing Boeing's right to bid on future crewed spaceflight contracts.
Image source: Getty Images.
Mission accomplished
All of the above was in stark contrast to Boeing's original attempt to send Starliner to ISS on Dec. 20, 2019. That flight failed because of an anomaly, limiting Starliner to a not-quite-there-and-back-again mission in which it launched, failed to reach ISS, and then came back home. But two years and five months later, almost to the day, Boeing is finally back in the space race, and ready to start catching up to SpaceX.
SpaceX succeeded where Boeing failed, reaching ISS on its first unmanned attempt back in March 2019. Furthermore, SpaceX followed up that uncrewed Demo-1 mission with a series of crewed successes:
- Demo-2 on April 17, 2020: Two NASA astronauts sent to ISS aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft, in the space agency's first astronaut launch from American territory since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.
- Crew-1 on Nov. 16, 2020: Three more NASA astronauts sent to ISS aboard an officially certified SpaceX Crew Dragon.
- Crew-2 on April 24, 2021: Four more astronauts delivered to ISS.
- Inspiration4 on Sept. 18, 2021: Four "citizen astronauts" circled Earth in a Crew Dragon, sans NASA.
- Crew-3 on Nov. 11, 2021: Four more NASA astronauts sent to ISS.
- Ax-1 on April 8, 2022: Four private astronauts sent to ISS on a mission sponsored by Axiom Space.
- And most recently, Crew-4: Four more NASA astronauts sent to ISS!
Add it all up, and SpaceX has now sent 25 humans to space aboard its Crew Dragon, while Boeing is still gearing up to send its first astronauts into orbit.
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What it means for Boeing
That being said, Boeing is at least back in this race, thanks to the successful completion of OFT-2 -- its rerun of the Starliner OFT-1 Orbital Flight Test. Next up will be Starliner's Boeing Crew Flight Test, dubbed "CFT."
No date has yet been set for this launch, and a few bugs still need stomping before it can take off. Most notably, two of the 12 thrusters on Starliner conked out en route to ISS last month, and there were apparently malfunctions among other guidance thrusters later on. Upon arriving at the space station, Starliner's docking mechanism malfunctioned and had to be reset. Finally, issues arose with the spacecraft's temperature control system.
As Boeing spokesman Steve Siceloff noted, though, this was "all part of the learning process" -- the reason, in fact, OFT-2 was flown uncrewed, so as to identify and fix bugs before putting astronauts aboard. Long term, Boeing's bigger problem won't be technical glitches, but getting Starliner's cost down to a point at which it can compete with SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
As NASA's inspector general noted in 2019, once Starliner is operational, it is expected to charge approximately $90 million per "seat" -- per astronaut carried from Earth to ISS. That's 64% more than SpaceX's estimated $55 million seat cost on Crew Dragon -- and indeed, even more than the Russians were charging NASA for seats aboard their Soyuz spacecraft.
Suffice it to say that Boeing may have a hard time convincing NASA to pay more money for a less proven (than Crew Dragon) spacecraft. Going forward, NASA will almost certainly want to give Boeing enough contracts to keep Starliner operational, so as to preserve price competition with SpaceX on future crewed missions. But in order to ensure the best use of limited funds, it's likely that SpaceX will be awarded more crew missions than Boeing gets.
Boeing may be back in the space race, but for the time being, it's still No. 2 in a two-company race.
