What NASA’s Reliance on SpaceX Means for Boeing

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When American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams boarded a Boeing Starliner spacecraft back in June, they were expecting to spend about a week on the International Space Station and then they'd fly home. But it's now the end of August, and Butch and Sunny are still up there. The Starliner spacecraft that delivered them to the ISS ran into some problems on the way up, and as NASA looked into

As time wore on, we started to get the sunset. Okay, maybe NASA isn't so comfortable with bringing the Starliner crew home on Starliner.

On Saturday, NASA administrator and former US Senator Bill Nelson announced that the ast wouldn't be making it home this summer or this fall.

NASA has decided that Butch and Sunny will return with Crew nine next February.

Next February, and not on a Boeing Starliner. The astronauts are scheduled to fly back with Boeing's chief rival in commercial space travel. Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Faes fared for a decade or more so, to have Elon Musk, of all people, rescuing their crew is just really terrible optics.

Julie Johnson is Bloomberg's Boeing beat reporter. Boeing can't seem to stay out of the news this year. First a commercial plane part fell off, a seven thirty seven Max, and now these astronauts are set to get a ride home from the company's fiercest competitor, at least as far as its space portfolio is concerned. This all might look like a win for SpaceX and a loss for Boeing, and it's the latest chapter in a battle for dominance in space travel. But there's a lot more at stake

Really, I mean years. How far back do we want to go with this mission?

We'll start back in twenty fourteen when NASA chose companies for its commercial crew program.

The Commercial Crew program was a bit of a radical chain for NASA, where they would act more like a customer.

The idea was NASA would pay private companies to develop spacecraft to fly their astronauts to the ISS. For NASA, it meant spending less of its own resources developing and testing this tech, or relying less on Russian spacecraft, which was complicated for geopolitical reasons, and it was a good deal for the companies too.

NASA said it would give a lump sum of money, kind of like seed investment, and once the capsules were complete, NASA would buy rides for its astronauts on those vehicles, but the companies would ultimately own the vehicles themselves so that they could then use them to turn a profit later by selling commercial tickets on their flights.

At the time, there was one clear front runner in the commercial spacecraft industry, Boeing.

Actually following is a space pioneer.

That's Boeing reporter Julie Johnson.

They were instrumental in the Apollo program in the sixties. They rescued the Saturn rocket at the time, the world's biggest rocket that was used to take astronauts to the Moon, and they're the crime contractor for the International Space Station, so they had definitely the advantages of an incumbent.

When it came time for NASA to award its commercial crew contracts. Lauren says, there were some major players pushing for Boeing to get all of the money.

I spoke with Lori Garver, who was a Deputy Administrator at the time, and she really spearheaded this program, and a lot of members of Congress, and then Boeing themselves and NASA management really lobbied hard for Boeing to be the only ones to receive the contract.

According to Luri, but Lourie and others that NASA decided there should really be two providers in the mix. They didn't want to rely on Boeing alone.

And there are a number of reasons to do that. One, you know, it kind of inspired a friendly competition to see who would be first to launch people on these vehicles, and then also kind of illustrates. You know why we need to providers with this whole saga is that, you know, if there was a problem with one vehicle, they would have another American made, non Russian vehicle that could get its astronauts into orbit.

NASA awarded two contracts, four point two billion dollars to Boeing and two point six billion dollars to what was then a plucky upstart Elon Musk's SpaceX.

They were very much the underdog in this race.

And how has that friendly competition gone. How have Boeing and SpaceX each performed since that twenty fourteen contract award.

Right, So, for years and years they did appear outwardly to be kind of neck and neck in terms of their development. When they first handed out launched contracts in twenty fourteen, they expected these vehicles to launch as early as twenty seventeen, but nobody made that deadline.

But soon SpaceX started to pull ahead with a series of successful launches.

And then they just pushed it beyond anything anybody's ever done. If you work the partners landed, maybe their performance has just been extraordinary and outstanding.

Julie says. SpaceX did have a few key advantages.

SpaceX was delivering cargo to the space station and so they were able to modify this craft that they already had, whereas Boeing was starting from scratch.

They were also a buzzy startup.

Suddenly they were the cool company everyone wanted to go work for.

They were the visionaries, and they used a startup business model, the move fast and break things mentality of Silicon Valley.

One of the ways that SpaceX likes to test is by launching things very early on in their development and knowing that they might not necessarily succeed, but pushing them to their limits until they and then learning from those quote unquote failures and incorporating those lessons learned into the next flight. So we've seen quite a number of explosions there, but with each subsequent test launch they push the envelope farther have fewer explosions, so they've definitely learning and iterating.

And in twenty twenty, SpaceX had a major breakthrough.

Three two fun zero ignition liftops. As a fact nine a crew d.

It successfully sent its first spacecraft crewed with NASA astronauts to the ISS Data Goospat deck got beat bottom dog. Since that first successful crude launch in twenty twenty. SpaceX has sent nine separate crews of NASA astronauts up to the ISS. And as for Boeing, where I want to begin. When Boeing first launched it's Starliner spacecraft in an uncrude test back in twenty nineteen, the.

Vehicle suffered a number of software glitches which ultimately prevented the vehicle from reaching the International Space Station as planned.

From there, NASA did a big review of the program and agreed that Boeing would do a do over mission another uncrude test flight.

But then just before they were about to launch, they discovered a number of corroded valves on the vehicle and ultimately had to roll it back to the hangar, and that delayed them up to another year before they were able to launch that mission again.

The Starliner capsule launched successfully in May of twenty twenty two, and finally two years later, in May of this year, Boeing was ready to launch a crude flight with two astronauts up to the ISS, but when it came time to launch, it had some issue with a valve. Boeing replaced it, but then found a helium leak After a few weeks they decided it was safe to move ahead even with that leak.

So we were really eager to see this launch take place because of all of the problems that they've had, and it seemed as if they might have finally overcome all of these issues.

Lauren was there in Cape Canaveral for that launch.

So we had gotten down to, I want to say, a couple minutes to the lift off, and then they delayed it. And I remember on that attempt I sunk to my knees because I was so frustrated.

It had to do with a computer that didn't perform properly and triggered an abort, another false start, but finally on June.

Fifth, Johnnie and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflights with each and every one of you.

Six five Boeing Starliner launched with two astronauts on board.

Ignition and lift off of Starliner and Atlas five carrying two American heroes.

Drawing shortly after launch. Things started to go wrong after the break, how the Starliner test flight got messy, and how SpaceX stepped in astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams reached the International Space Station safely on June sixth, but on the way up, their Boeing Starliner had more helium leaks and some thrusters on the spacecraft failed and had

When it came down to it, NASA doesn't have the tolerance for risk rightfully so that it once did.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson spoke at a news conference last weekend. He evoked the deadly Challenger explosion in nineteen eighty six and the disintegration of the Columbia Shuttle during re entry in two thousand and three.

We have had mistakes done in the past. We lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward.

The agency has a much different approach to safety these days. And it's not like they were out of auctions. They knew SpaceX was sending a capsule up that could bring Butch and Sunny back next year.

What does it mean for Boeing financially that these astronauts are now stuck for an extra six months and this launch failed.

Essentially, the economics for this program are not looking good. Oh and by the way, Bowing's and Chaos, They've not made an annual profit this decade. They've got a new CEO with a mandate to come in and look at everything with a fresh eye.

So did some of the problems that are plaguing Boeing's airplane division also have an impact on the spacecraft program.

One hundred percent. Yeah, you know why things break apart or organizations failed. These are really complex dynamic that play out, you know, over hundreds or thousands of decisions, little decisions that chip away at expertise.

Julie says, much like the problems with Boeing seven thirty seven Max civilian jets, some of the star Liner problems likely come down to oversight, failing to properly regulate the work of outside contractors, and a culture that employees say has discouraged them from speaking up about issues. All that has come at a high price for the company.

Because of the delays on star Liner. Boeing had already lost about one point six billion dollars on this program, and the contract is only for six astronaut flights once NASA clears Starliner to carry you know, regular humans. So that's not there's no way you recover that amount of money over six trips.

What do we know about how Boeing is weighing the costs and benefits of remaining involved in the commercial crew program itself.

You've got a new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, who has a free pass from Wall Street, from investors and stakeholders to go in and to make the tough decisions, and in context, what they care about is getting the commercial airplane division back on track. This is a distraction, not to minimize it.

Over the weekend, Boeing shared a statement with Bloomberg saying Boeing continues to focus first and foremost on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful, uncrude return. In the meantime, for SpaceX, being tapped to bring the astronauts home bolsters their image as a reliable partner to the US government, a company that's matured beyond the days of viral rocket explosions.

I think there's probably a lot of pride in being able to answer this call for NASA. The point of picking two providers is really for this exact scenario, you just don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.

And in the coming years, having commercial partners in space is only going to be more important for NASA, and that could mean more opportunities for SpaceX to make its mark.

You know, It's Falcon nine rocket has become the most prolific rocket on the face of the Earth right now. So SpaceX has really worked to become more and more routine and reliable as a launch provider.

But SpaceX still has its bad days. Just this week, the company's primary Falcon nine rocket was grounded by federal regulators after a failed landing This quite literally is rocket science, and it's not always easy to get it right. In the meantime, those two astronauts will be orbiting Earth for a lot longer than they planned, but they seem to be doing all right. We've heard from the astronauts themselves in one press conference since they landed on the ISS. Here's Sunny Williams.

We are having a great time here on ISS, you know. Butch and I have been up here before, and it feels like coming back home. It feels good to float around, It feels good to be in space and work up here with the International Space Station team. So yeah, it's great to be up here.

Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was mixed by Blake Maples. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Eric Johnson. It was fact checked by Adrianna Tapia. Wendy Benjaminson and Elizabeth Ponso provide editorial direction for the show. Our senior producers are Kim Gittelson and Naomi Shaven, who also edited this episode. Nicole Bumsterbor is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.