Over the weekend, NASA made the tough decision to return its two stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore on board a SpaceX spacecraft sometime next year, forcing Boeing’s plagued Starliner to return empty.
The doomed spacecraft experienced several thruster malfunctions before and during its journey to the International Space Station, forcing NASA to come up with an alternative ride back for its crew.
And it was a fateful blow that must’ve come as quite a shock to Boeing’s leadership.
As the New York Post reports, Boeing executives were fuming as NASA made its decision. The meetings were “heated” and led to execs yelling and arguing, as one NASA leader told the publication under condition of anonymity.
“Boeing wasn’t happy,” the source told the newspaper. “And they made that perfectly clear to us. But what’s the headline if there’s a catastrophic failure? It’s not ‘Boeing killed two astronauts,’ it’s ‘NASA killed two astronauts.’ So no, it’s better safe than sorry.”
Mark Nappi, the head of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, kept things relatively civil in an email to employees obtained by the NY Post.
“I know this is not the decision we had hoped for, but we stand ready to carry out the actions necessary to support NASA’s decision,” he wrote. “The focus remains first and foremost on ensuring the safety of the crew and spacecraft.”
Nappi added that he had the “utmost confidence in this team to prepare Starliner for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”
Earlier this week, a Boeing employee told the NY Post that the team was left “humiliated” following NASA’s announcement, while alluding to all of the other crises the aerospace giant had been through over the last couple of years.
“We have had so many embarrassments lately, we’re under a microscope,” the worker said. “This just made it, like, 100 times worse.”
Clearly the incident has fractured relations between NASA and one of its biggest contractors.
“Boeing was convinced that the Starliner was in good enough condition to bring the astronauts home, and NASA disagreed,” the NASA exec told the NY Post. “Strongly disagreed.”
“The thinking around here was that Boeing was being wildly irresponsible,” they added.
It’s a major setback for Boeing and it remains unclear what the plan will be once it makes its return journey. Some experts suggest that the company may ditch the project entirely. If it does try again, it’ll have to act fast, as the ISS is set to be decommissioned in roughly five years.
On Thursday, NASA announced that Starliner will attempt to make its uncrewed return home on September 6.
“Teams on the ground are able to remotely command the spacecraft if needed through the necessary maneuvers for a safe undocking, re-entry, and parachute-assisted landing in the southwest United States,” the agency wrote in the update.
Regardless of how it fares during its descent, Boeing’s first uncrewed test flight has already been a disaster for Boeing — and upcoming meetings about Starliner’s future will likely remain just as tense.
