Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft safely landed empty in the New Mexico desert about eight weeks ago, marking a hollow end to the company’s historic first human spaceflight. The vehicle’s passengers during its upward flight to the International Space Station earlier this summer, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, remain in space, awaiting a ride home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
Boeing has been steadfastly silent about the fate of Starliner since then. Two senior officials, including Boeing’s leader of human spaceflight, John Shannon, were originally due to attend a post-landing news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston. However, just minutes before the news conference was to begin, two seats were removed—the Boeing officials were no-shows.
In lieu of speaking publicly, Boeing issued a terse statement early on the morning of September 8, attributing it to Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s commercial crew program. “We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program,” Nappi said, in part.
And since then? Nothing. Requests for comment from Boeing have gone unanswered. The simple explanation is that the storied aviation company, which has a new chief executive named Kelly Ortberg, remains in the midst of evaluating Boeing’s various lines of business.
Figuring out what to do with Starliner
“There are probably some things on the fringe there that we can be more efficient with, or that just distract us from our main goal here. So, more to come on that,” Ortberg said during his first quarterly earnings call last week. “I don’t have a specific list of things that we’re going to keep and we’re not going to keep. That’s something for us to evaluate, and the process is underway.”
Also last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing is considering putting some of its space businesses, including Starliner, up for sale. This suggests that if Boeing can get a return on its investment in Starliner, it probably would be inclined to take the money. To date, the company has reported losses of $1.85 billion on Starliner. As a result, Boeing has told NASA it will no longer bid on fixed-price space contracts in the future.
