From Cutting Edge To Barely Making the Cut

Boeing’s troubles rise to new heights

Boeing has been in the news recently for its troubles with keeping doors from it’s planes falling down. I am sure by now everyone is also aware of Boeing’s latest issue a few miles above our atmosphere. If not, the TL;DR is that NASA’s two astronauts, Barry (Butch) Wilmore and Sunita (Suni) Williams, were ferried up to the Space Station on a Boeing Starliner capsule as part of technology demonstration for this new crew capable system. But it turned out to be a one-way trip as Starliner continued to experience problems with helium leaks in the spacecraft’s propulsion system.

After a lot of back & forth from NASA about when the Starliner could bring the two astronauts back, it turns out the issues were critical enough for NASA not to risk bringing them back on Starliner. A two week round-trip journey for these pioneering astronauts has turned into a 9 month extended stay.

(Left) The Starliner spacecraft on NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test is seen docked to International Space Station on June 13. (Right) Starliner came back to Earth following the uncrewed spacecraft’s successful landing.(credit NASA)

Starliner finally came down safely on its own on September 6th at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. This uncrewed return went without much drama, meaning the system worked as expected. But there’s plenty to be said about not completing the actual mission, i.e ferrying humans to space and bringing them back.

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Historical Context

After the retirement of NASA’s reliable Space Shuttle program (for being too costly), NASA had to make some difficult choices. To meet its immediate needs of servicing the Space Station in low-Earth orbit, NASA had to turn towards the Russian Soyuz program. This was an uncomfortable relationship and one US wanted to exit quickly.

Launches of Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour Space Shuttles. (NASA)

That remained the only option for a decade. In order to get out of that, NASA turned towards commercial options. Initially, Boeing seemed like the only dependable option to build a crew-capable spacecraft. But a last minute change was made to include a new player — SpaceX. Which turned out to be the right decision in the end, yet an unprecedented one at the time. Boeing got a chunk of the fixed-price contract with $4.6 Billion dollars and SpaceX got $2.3 Billion to build crew capable systems.

This new kid on the block was hungry for success. SpaceX did its demo flights in 2020 and since then has continued to reliably ferry astronauts in its Dragon capsule. In contrast, the space industry heavy-weight, Boeing, has had delays on top of delays. Multiple launches were scrubbed right before take off. Then there were issues once orbit was reached. Interestingly, delays with fixed-price contract has meant that Boeing has lost more than $1.5Bn on it.

So these latest issues aren’t really that surprising.

Space is harsh

Humans are not built for space. Space damages our bodies in some very obvious (lack of air) and in complex ways (radiation). So to have a fully operational floating lab in space called the Space Station is an achievement in itself.

But troubles don’t end once you get into orbit. In the time Suni & Butch have been up there, it has not been a “staycation” for them. They have to get involved in maintaining the systems as every crew member has tasks to complete to keep the Space Station operational.

Then there were emergency procedures initiated recently because space debris came too close to the Space Station when a Russian satellite broke up. This meant that all the astronauts had to take cover in their docked spacecrafts. As Butch & Suni said before lift off — “once you dock, you can shut down the system and it’s a safe space to use it as a lifeboat incase of issues on the Space Station.” Starliner passed this test.

Six spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, the Northrop Grumman resupply ship, the Soyuz MS-25 and MS-26 crew ships, and the Progress 88 and 89 resupply ships. (NASA)

There also has been a known issue about Space Station’s orbit decaying. Simply put, to avoid the Space Station failing down on Earth, its orbit has to be boosted up regularly.

Apart from exciting science experiments, including ones for extending human lifespan, the Space Station is a floating apartment you share with your roommates. Except, you can’t go out for groceries or call a plumber when the toilet breaks. Which is exactly what happened just before the launch. So Starliner had to carry a new 70Kg pump “pump urine reprocessing system” and the two astronauts had to leave some stuff behind.

All these issues add up. NASA now plans to de-orbit the Space Station in the future and shift its operations to a commercially owned station.

Space is hard

Starliner is meant to be an autonomous vehicle and has completed two trips to the Space Station. One extra than originally needed as the project has been marred with series of issues — “from faulty software and corroded valves to parachute components with inadequate safety margins and flammable tape used in spacecraft wiring”.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams pose on June 13, 2024 for a portrait inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. (Credit NASA)

During Starliner’s development phase, Butch and Suni worked closely with Boeing development teams, tested their systems and provided live feedback. Both are veteran US Navy pilots and NASA astronauts with experience going up to the Space Station in the Space Shuttle.

On a NASA podcast, Butch and Suni talked at length about the amount of their feedback that’s been integrated into the design of the Starliner spacecraft. Suni said — “we have had a hand in development from hardware to software”, all to be able to say “the spacecraft is ready and it can be used with people on it”. Working as the operators of the spacecraft, they brought in expertise on specifically how to test certain parts of the spacecraft.

One example is the “Black zone”, which is a part of the flight profile that if certain things happen is not survival. Think of these as “known” critical failure modes. They had several black zones on the Space Shuttle when it was operational. Starliner specifically had black zone for when it was coming back down. From their feedback, more testing and software changes, Starliner now has no black zones. Both highlighted the need for really “understanding your spacecraft.”

When asked “What are your goals for landing?” Butch jumps in to say “that we will. That’s the main goal. There is an army of people that will come in to check on us and on the spacecraft”. Suni added “Three parachutes, all the airbags and a nice soft landing”.

NASA We Have A Podcast (ep. 332).

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What’s next?

Obviously the most important thing next is for Suni and Butch to safely land back on Earth by sometime next February. This amount of unplanned time can’t be good for anyone. No matter how much anyone pretends “space is great”.

In a twist of fate, it’s SpaceX’s dragon capsule that will bring them back. Initially seen as a dangerous startup, looking to move fast and upend the space industry, now beating the standard bearer of space industry in reliability and also in confidence from everyone’s chief-space customer — NASA. This will be considered a humiliating turn of events for NASA & Boeing. But why should it! It’s a painful lesson, but hardly the end of Boeing. Or NASA. In hindsight, they made the right decision to not risk lives when faced with unknowns.

There’s plenty of commentary, snarky comments and memes already created for this —

I am all for fun, but as the public, we do have to acknowledge incredible work done by one of highest performing public space agencies in the world and give them some room. Any day you want to look back at their achievements and contributions to humanity, there’s a laundry list of that.

Importantly, these issues don’t necessarily impact NASA’s next goal of building towards a long term human presence on the Moon as part of Artemis program. They’ll get to apply all the knowledge from low-earth orbit missions to those longer & more complex Moon missions. Like the Gateway program that will orbit around the Moon, similar to the Space Station orbiting Earth. But with far more complications. NASA is again building up the commercial (& international) capabilities to support these missions.

The agency remains at the forefront of dreaming big and making it happen.

As for Boeing, time for (a lot of) reflection before they start trying to compete with SpaceX and others. Space industry is booming, but “reliability” remains top priority for every customer. Starliner might get to fly again at the end of next year, but don’t hold your breath (sorry). For now, a tanking public image and stock price has resulted in a flurry of changes of it’s leadership.

As Suni said onboard the ISS — “It’s time to turn the page and look at the next opportunity.”🚀

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