Boeing’s latest quarterly earnings report shows the company’s losses on Starliner have grown by another $125 million to reach some $1.6 billion in total.
NASA in 2014 chose Boeing and SpaceX to develop human space transportation systems capable of carrying people to orbit, giving Boeing $4.2 billion to create the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner spacecraft and SpaceX the $2.6 billion used to create Crew Dragon. While SpaceX launched its first crewed flight with a Dragon capsule in 2020, it wasn’t until the second quarter of 2022 that Boeing completed an uncrewed orbital flight test with Starliner following months of delays, as well as a malfunction during the capsule’s first flight test in 2019.
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A crewed Starliner mission to the International Space Station finally took off in early June, sending NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the orbital laboratory for what was to be a week-long stay. At the time of this report however, they’re still there with no set return date.
NASA and Boeing leadership have repeatedly assured that Wilmore and Williams are safe and could theoretically leave at any time.
At a teleconference July 10, NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich and Boeing Commercial Crew Program Vice President and Program Manager Mark Nappi said that Starliner’s problem-plagued propulsion system is designed to detach from Starliner and burn up upon reentry, stressing that mission managers thus have this one chance to study it in the hard-to-reach environment and are being advantageous in keeping the capsule attached to the space station in order to do more testing.
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Boeing’s Q2 2024 earnings report attributes Starliner’s latest losses to these delays.
The Starliner spacecraft had a minimum mission duration of 8 days. Its return to Earth was delayed to allow time to perform further testing of propulsion system anomalies. As a result of the CFT delays, during the three months ended June 30, 2024, we increased the reach-forward loss on the program by $125 (million). At June 30, 2024, we had approximately $238 (million) of capitalized precontract costs and $148 (million) of potential termination liabilities to suppliers related to fixed-price unauthorized future missions. Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods.
FORM 10-Q for the quarterly period ended June 30, 2024 | THE BOEING COMPANY | Commercial Crew (excerpt)
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