It's official now. On August 31, NASA confirmed its announcement -- first made back in June -- that it has awarded SpaceX five more contracts to fly astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). With that confirmation in hand, we now know that through 2030, the "Commercial Crew Transportation" program, or CCT, will comprise a total of 14 SpaceX missions to ISS and only six for Boeing (BA -2.87%).    

This is a curious conclusion to a program that began with a controversial decision -- to pay Boeing 61.5% more for the same work SpaceX would be performing. And it certainly hasn't turned out as Boeing and others probably expected it would. But why didn't it?

NASA played favorites -- and lost

If you think back to September 2014, when NASA first announced that SpaceX and Boeing would lead its CCT project, it sort of made sense for NASA to pay Boeing a premium. After all, at the time, neither Boeing nor SpaceX had a working human-rated spacecraft built yet.

Boeing, however, as part of United Launch Alliance, did at least have a long history of doing successful space work for NASA -- whereas SpaceX was the new kid on the block and hadn't yet established a record of reliability. (Indeed, over the next two years, not one but two separate SpaceX rockets would explode before reaching space.)

Boeing seemed to be the safer bet back in 2014. But what about today?

As it turns out, eight years into the CCT program, it's SpaceX that has proven itself the more reliable operator. SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon spacecraft faster than Boeing did its Starliner. SpaceX got Crew Dragon certified for human spaceflight first. And SpaceX has flown four successful crewed missions to ISS -- versus Boeing, which hasn't yet sent any astronauts there aboard its Starliner spacecraft.

Simply put, against all odds, SpaceX proved itself more reliable than Boeing.

More reliable -- and cheaper, too

And that's not all. As Ars Technica pointed out last week, astronaut "seats" aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon have also proven much cheaper than contracted prices for seats on Boeing's Starliner. Indeed, after crunching the numbers, Ars Technica determined that, at present prices, Boeing is actually charging 2.1 times more per seat than SpaceX is. And the disparity is growing.

Over the course of 56 total "seats" flown to ISS across 14 missions, SpaceX's prices will work out to an average of $88 million per astronaut, versus $183 million per astronaut for Boeing, according to Ars Technica. Moreover, SpaceX's seat cost has been actually falling over time, so that the gap in prices is growing.

According to NASA's latest press release, the 20 seats covered by SpaceX's most recent award of five flights (at four astronauts per flight) will cost NASA only $1.44 billion, which works out to less than $72 million per seat -- an 18.5% reduction in price from the program's total cost and just 39% of what Boeing is charging for its seats.  

And for Boeing, the news gets even worse.

As the U.S. government switches increasingly to awarding fixed-price contracts to its contractors as a means of preventing cost overruns, Boeing is now stuck with the bill when it goes over budget on CCT. After needing to rerun its initial test flight of Starliner on its own dime earlier this year, Boeing is now believed to be losing money on the contract -- despite charging more money per seat.  

What's next for Boeing?

So is this a "break Boeing" kind of moment? Does the closing off of potential crew transport contracts to ISS doom Boeing stock to irrelevance?

Hardly. Boeing's aerospace business has always has been more "aero" than "space." And with Covid fears starting to recede among the flying public, Boeing's commercial airplane sales are already starting to pick back up. (When those sales will be profitable again is the bigger question). Going forward, airplane sales -- both civilian and military -- are probably going to be more important to Boeing than its space ventures.

Still, the future for Boeing's Starliner doesn't look bright. On the one hand, SpaceX has locked up all potential crew transfer flights to ISS through the space station's expected end of life in 2030. And in the absence of any other destinations to fly to, there's no guarantee there will be a use for Boeing's Starliner after it completes the six ISS flights it's been awarded.

On the same hand, SpaceX has a longer record of successful flights with Crew Dragon than Boeing's Starliner has -- or can even acquire over the next eight years -- and SpaceX's flights are demonstrably cheaper than the prices Boeing is charging. Even if, at some future date, other space companies build private space stations to replace ISS, it won't be easy for Boeing to compete with SpaceX for flights to such stations on either reliability or price.

At this point, Boeing's best bet in space is to hope the Orbital Reef space station, which it plans to build in cooperation with Blue Origin, proceeds to completion, giving it a destination for future Starliner flights. Failing that, Starliner could become a spaceship without space contracts -- and without a future.