For six decades, Boeing was one of the marquee names in human spaceflight.
The company helped build Nasa’s mighty Saturn V rockets that put man on the moon; it was a key contractor during the space shuttle era and international space station operations; and its engines power the agency’s next leap for the stars, the peerless Space Launch System.
Therefore, a recent report in the Wall Street Journal that the troubled aerospace giant is exploring the sale of significant pieces of its space business to the debacle of his loss-making Starliner capsule raised a number of eyebrows among industry insiders.
Boeing said last month quarterly losses rose to nearly $6 billion in the midst of a workers’ strike, and its new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, suggested his priority would be to fix problems and repair bridges in the company’s core business of making airplanes.
“We are better off doing less and doing it better than doing more and not doing it well,” he said. told analysts on a recent earnings call.
There is no suggestion that Boeing plans to pull itself out of space entirely, or that the company’s introspection will ultimately lead to the sale of its department for defence, space and security or any part thereof.
“Boeing does not comment on market rumors or speculation,” a spokesperson said in a statement to the Guardian.
But that a company inextricably linked to every major American achievement in space since the 1960s is even considering stepping back from ventures that helped make its name confirms deep-seated issues within Boeing, experts say.
“Boeing has always had a great sense of pride in being involved in the space industry, and something that the public has seen as an example of the company’s technical skill and capability, so this is certainly surprising from that perspective,” said Dr Donald Platt. professor of aeronautics, physics and space sciences at Florida Tech, and director of the university’s Spaceport Education Center.
“But when you look at the problems they’re facing now, and the problems Starliner created for them … nobody knows for sure how much money they had to pour into Starliner to even get to where they are now, so that’s a very big problem that Boeing is looking at right now from the space point of view.”
Boeing announced in September that Ted Colbert was the head of its space division leave the company when Ortberg began “cleaning up” efforts.
Still, beyond image and prestige, Platt said, the turmoil at Boeing and uncertainty about when, or even if, Starliner will fly again pose a number of serious questions for Nasa, particularly about the future of near-Earth manned spaceflight.
Starliner was intended to be operational now as an alternative to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to transport astronauts to the space station. Technical issues forced her return to earth in September without Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts who piloted its first crewed flight.
Nasa said last month it would award next year’s two scheduled crew rotation flights to SpaceX.
Bill Nelson, the Nasa administrator, replied “100%” when he was asked at a press conference in August if Starliner were to fly with a crew again. Although Platt said he doesn’t share that confidence, “especially when we look at the fact that we’re going to have a new administration quickly, whether it’s either a Democratic or a Republican presidential administration, it’s going to be a new set of people be managed Nasa.”
“They can make decisions that are completely unrelated to what Bill Nelson has to say at the moment,” he added.
Officially, Nasa’s position is that it “keeps options on the table” regarding Starliner. Notably, the agency has invested more than $5 billion in the project since 2014, and growing speculation that Boeing may be ready to walk away, with $1.85 billion in losses of its own, is likely to add to the seemingly existing friction between the space agency and its commercial partner. That tension became more and more clear after the test flight failure.
Even if Boeing decides it does want to spin off Starliner and its space station operations, it may not be able to find a buyer, other analysts say.
“From what we’ve heard, it’s a very surgical approach to what Boeing would be interested in selling from their space business, and whether or not that’s feasible is an important question,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aviation Safety Project. said. and a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Another question is who would be interested in buying that very piece of the business that it’s not clear that Boeing thinks they can make a profit on. It seems like a very unattractive part of the space business and makes you question who would see potential or value there and want to do that deal.”
Swope said some of Boeing’s problems in its space division can be attributed to how the new business of commercial spaceflight is run: Nasa pays operators fixed price and term contracts instead of the mostly open-ended and more fluid partnerships of the Apollo -era and beyond.
“A potential lesson from Starliner and the Boeing experiences here is how companies that have typically done business with NASA and the US government are turning to where the agency and much of the government now wants to do space, what as a service? ” he said.
“Where Nasa pays for transportation services to the moon, to the space station, for astronauts, for cargo, it’s a fixed price arrangement and not a typical one that Boeing or another large government contractor would be comfortable with.
“That pivot is playing out now and may have something to do with the Starliner and the Boeing story.”
