In the early hours of tomorrow morning a small unmanned spacecraft will detach from the International Space Station to head back to Earth, and the future of one of the world’s biggest airliners may hang on what happens next.
Boeing, once unassailable in its industry, has endured several years mired in fraud charges and safety scandals that has seen its value plummet to half what it was five years ago. After two brand new Boeing 737 Max airliners, the future of the brand, crashed five months apart in 2018 and 2019, resulting in the deaths of 346 passengers and crew, all the company’s flagship planes were grounded worldwide for 21 months.
A Federal Aviation Administration investigation revealed Boeing failed to address key issues raised in the plane’s development, and a design flaw in the autopilot system had caused the crashes. Then in January this year, a door blew off another 737 Max after it was revealed the plane had left the factory missing bolts. More planes were grounded.
Chief executive Dave Calhoun stepped down in March and in July Boeing plead guilty to fraud and accepted fines imposed by the US Justice Department of $US487 million in relation to the two fatal crashes. The fines followed an agreed settlement of $2.5 billion in 2021. The Department of Justice found Boeing had not implemented or enforced compliance changes.
Negotiations between the company and the International Association of Machinists union, which is seeking a 40 per cent wage rise over three years, are proving a further headache, with the potential for 32,000 workers to walk off the job if a deal is not reached when the existing contract expires next week. The union is also calling for a culture change at the airline, including greater quality control.
Now, amid all that, two NASA astronauts who were on an eight-day mission to the International Space Station will be stranded in space for eight months after glitches on Starliner’s spaceship made it too risky to bring them back. The mission to test the ability of Starliner to transport astronauts into space is largely seen as an embarrassing failure.
“Boeing is going to need to grapple with the consequences of the failure of this mission to achieve its test objectives,” Todd Harrison, a space industry veteran, told NPR recently.
“It’s fairly likely Boeing will, within a few weeks or months, come to the conclusion that they just need to step back [from Starliner]”, he said.
“This program kind of sticks out as something that doesn’t fit with the rest of their business.”
Boeing was anticipating a return to profit in 2024, after amassing cumulative losses of $23.2 billion over the previous four years to end 2023 with a net debt of over $36 billion.
While they’re up there, we have extra hands, they can do a lot more work, but they’re also using up more consumables, more supplies.
And things were looking up until the first manned Starliner developing a helium leak on its ascent and its thrusters stopped working.
Astronauts Barry Willmore and Sunita Williams arrived on the International Space Station on June 6, with a mission to test the Starliner to receive NASA approval. The Starliner will now be brought back uncrewed on Saturday (AEST).
While Boeing says its spacecraft will return safely, it isn’t prepared to risk the astronauts’ lives. A successful reentry and landing will go some way to restoring faith in the embattled aerospace company, but if anything goes wrong or the spaceship is destroyed it will further cement perceptions Boeing has become unreliable in an industry that values safety over all else.
“We continue to support NASA’s requests for additional testing, data, analysis and reviews to affirm the spacecraft’s safe undocking and landing capabilities,” Boeing said.
The trapped astronauts are now scheduled to return to Earth in February 2025 aboard its rival Space X commercial re-supply of the station. The Starliner must return to Earth so the Space X flight has room to dock at the station.
The astronauts, who are sharing the station with five other Americans and Russians, are meanwhile undertaking station maintenance and research.
NASA’s director of space operations, Ken Bowersox, said: “While they’re up there, we have extra hands, they can do a lot more work, but they’re also using up more consumables, more supplies.”
And setbacks have continued with a pulsing noise developing in the docked Starliner last week, although it was deemed non-serious and caused by a speaker feedback loop occurring between the Starliner and the ISS.
NASA has turned to using private businesses to transport astronauts to the International Space Station, awarding multi-billion dollar contracts to both Starliner and Space X in 2014. The space agency’s last space shuttle was retired in 2011, after which the US had been using Russia’s Soyuz craft until 2020, when Space X was first able to make the journey.
In a 2019 report, NASA estimated the cost per seat to get an astronaut to the ISS to be $90 million for Boeing and $55 million for Space X. The fixed price contracts are $4.3 billion for Boeing and $2.5 billion for Space X.
The fixed-priced contracts taken with the Pentagon and NASA underestimated the cost of production of Starliner, with space industry reporter Joey Roulette estimating Boeing’s total costs so far at $1.6 billion. As a result Boeing shares have fallen 30.99 per cent this year alone.
Compounding criticism of the company, has been concern over the deaths of two whistleblowers, who both died suddenly after going public with safety concerns.
Joshua Dean, who warned of defects in the 737 Max, filed a complaint with the FAA that the Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems ignored manufacturing defects. Dean died in April of a sudden mysterious infection. John Barnett who also made a whistleblower complaint and told the New York Times he urged employers to remove shavings found in flight controls before being moved to another manufacturing plant. In March, he was found dead with a “self-inflicted gunshot wound”.
Another whistleblower, Sam Salepour, who was an engineer at Boeing, told the US Senate he was concerned about “physical violence” after publicly stating his concerns.
While Starliner’s first uncrewed flight in 2022 was a success, its manned test the following year was also delayed after an issue with parachutes was identified in testing — adding $288 million to the cost of the contract.
By comparison Space X has made eight successful missions with crewed flights at a cheaper price.
Should Starliner return safely, NASA says it will be running a fine-tooth comb over data from the mission to determine if Boeing’s craft can meet NASA certification requirements.
Main image created with GenCraft AI.
