This Boeing project cost 2 billion dollars but was a total failure.

©NASA

Boeing is known worldwide for its aircraft. The main competitor of the French Airbus is regularly talked about, but not always in a good way. Recently, it is not even the company's aircraft that have given it bad press, but another project: Starliner.

Behind this catchy name hides a slightly crazy idea, that of working for NASA. Boeing has in fact been participating in the COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) program for several years. It was this NASA mission that notably allowed SpaceX to earn hundreds of millions of dollars and to carve out a place of choice in orbit.

Starliner: a $2 billion failure

Seeing SpaceX succeed mission after mission, Boeing wanted to imitate the Californian company by building its own habitable shuttle. It was to take astronauts to the ISS before bringing them back to Earth six months later. Such launches are a real financial windfall for Boeing, which saw the dollars before the problems.

So for years, Starliner has been in development. On May 19, 2022, a first “qualification” flight took place. After numerous postponements due to technical problems, Starliner finally reached space. Boeing's rocket flew in orbit for 5 days before returning to Earth. Its development then cost more than 1.5 billion dollars.

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Once this qualification flight is successful, NASA schedules a crewed flight to the ISS for the following months. The two chosen ones will be Sunni Williams and Butch Wilmore. They take off on June 5, 2024, despite several warnings announcing leaks around the rocket.

A nightmare mission

Since then, nothing has been going well for Boeing. The ship did indeed manage to dock with the ISS, but it was unable to leave safely. Major leaks caused it to return empty, as NASA did not want to take any risks.

Since then, the two astronauts, who had left for a 7-day mission, have been stuck in orbit. They've been stuck 400 kilometers above our heads for almost 8 months, waiting for a ship to bring them back to Earth.

Donald Trump recently assured in a tweet that his friend Elon Musk would soon resolve the problem. A recovery flight has in fact been planned for several months for the end of March. In a recent message, the NASA spokesperson assured that a return to Earth on this date was “the best possible option”, but that further delays were to be expected.

For their part, the two astronauts, who have always appeared smiling and confident, now seem annoyed by the situation. In a short, ironic statement, Sunni Williams wondered if after so much time in space she would still be able to walk once she returned to Earth.

What's next for Boeing ?

After such publicity, the survival of the Starliner program hangs by a thread. NASA would like to keep this commercial opponent against SpaceX but the unreliability of Starliner risks failing it. In addition, the very close ties between Elon Musk (SpaceX boss) Donald Trump and the new NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman (one of Elon Musk's closest friends) may not help matters for Boeing.

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