Boeing sending first astronaut crew to space after years of delay
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[May 03, 2024]
By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing is poised to send the first Starliner
space capsule with a crew of humans into orbit next week, giving it a
long-delayed chance to score a badly needed win as it struggles to
compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The CST-100 Starliner test mission, a years-delayed milestone after more
than $1 billion in cost overruns, will ferry two NASA astronauts to the
International Space Station (ISS) in a final demonstration before the
spacecraft can be approved to fly routine space trips under the space
agency's commercial crew program.
NASA in recent years has backed a new generation of privately built
spacecraft that can ferry its astronauts and other customers to the ISS
and, under its more ambitious Artemis program, to the moon and
eventually Mars. Starliner is the latest product of the agency's
commercial-leaning model.
"The first crewed flight of a new spacecraft is an absolutely critical
milestone," NASA associate administrator Jim Free told reporters in a
pre-launch news conference. "The lives of our crew members, Suni
Williams and Butch Wilmore, are at stake."
Williams, 58, is a former Naval test pilot with experience flying over
30 different aircraft, and has logged 322 days in space over two
missions since her first flight in 2007. Wilmore, 61, a retired Navy
captain, has logged 178 days in space since his first of two space
missions in 2009.
Starliner, a gumdrop-shaped pod with room for up to seven astronauts,
has come to symbolize Boeing's struggles to compete with new space
rivals like SpaceX, whose Crew Dragon spacecraft flew its first human
mission in 2020.
A 2019 attempt to send an uncrewed Starliner to the ISS for a week
failed, returning to Earth several days early, because of dozens of
software and engineering issues.
That mission reshaped Boeing's decades-old relationship with NASA and
marked the first of many more high-profile issues the company would
encounter with Starliner, which is on a fixed-price contract for
development and scheduled to fly six NASA astronaut missions once
certified as safe for flight.
The development woes have cost Boeing more than $1.5 billion in charges,
and NASA roughly $325 million in boosts to Boeing's $4.2 billion
fixed-price Starliner contract, according to securities filings and
contracting data examined by Reuters.
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Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule launches aboard a United Launch
Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on a second un-crewed test flight to the
International Space Station, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. May
19, 2022. REUTERS/Steve Nesius/File Photo
Meanwhile, SpaceX's Crew Dragon has obtained several more flights
from NASA as Boeing's Starliner remains in development. Boeing in
2022 made a second, successful attempt to launch Starliner to the
ISS and back.
NASA officials have doubled their oversight of Starliner since the
2019 failure and argue that Boeing's experience building and
maintaining modules on the ISS should be a confidence booster.
"Knowing firsthand the ins and outs of NASA, this launch would not
be happening if there wasn't an enormous amount of confidence in the
Starliner achieving its objectives," Jim Bridenstine, the previous
NASA administrator, told Reuters.
The agency wants the redundancy of having two different U.S. rides
to the ISS, an international science laboratory in Earth's orbit
that is expected to retire around 2030 after continuously housing
astronauts for three decades.
NASA is backing private development of new space stations that could
replace the ISS after its retirement, potentially giving Starliner
new destinations.
NASA's Commercial Crew Program sought to allow companies to sell
spacecraft services to private customers, which SpaceX but not
Boeing has done. The per-seat cost for SpaceX's Crew Dragon is
estimated at $55 million, while Starliner's is $90 million,
according to NASA's inspector general.
Boeing and NASA are targeting 10:34 p.m. ET on Monday (0234 GMT on
Tuesday) for Starliner's launch from Kennedy Space Center in
Florida.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; editing by Chris Sanders, Peter
Henderson and Leslie Adler)
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