Boeing Starliner Will Fly 6 Times -- and Maybe Never Again

[Elderberry]

The Motley Fool By Rich Smith – Sep 18, 2022

Key Points

•  Through 2030, NASA has awarded 14 International Space Station crew flights to SpaceX and only six to Boeing.

•  By at least one measure, the cost of SpaceX flights will be half the cost of Boeing flights.

Can Boeing's Starliner compete with SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft on price? And if not, what's the future for Boeing and its spaceship?

It's official now. On August 31, NASA confirmed its announcement -- first made back in June -- that it has awarded SpaceX five more contracts to fly astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). With that confirmation in hand, we now know that through 2030, the "Commercial Crew Transportation" program, or CCT, will comprise a total of 14 SpaceX missions to ISS and only six for Boeing (BA -3.67%).   

This is a curious conclusion to a program that began with a controversial decision -- to pay Boeing 61.5% more for the same work SpaceX would be performing. And it certainly hasn't turned out as Boeing and others probably expected it would. But why didn't it?

NASA played favorites -- and lost

If you think back to September 2014, when NASA first announced that SpaceX and Boeing would lead its CCT project, it sort of made sense for NASA to pay Boeing a premium. After all, at the time, neither Boeing nor SpaceX had a working human-rated spacecraft built yet.

Boeing, however, as part of United Launch Alliance, did at least have a long history of doing successful space work for NASA -- whereas SpaceX was the new kid on the block and hadn't yet established a record of reliability. (Indeed, over the next two years, not one but two separate SpaceX rockets would explode before reaching space.)

Boeing seemed to be the safer bet back in 2014. But what about today?

As it turns out, eight years into the CCT program, it's SpaceX that has proven itself the more reliable operator. SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon spacecraft faster than Boeing did its Starliner. SpaceX got Crew Dragon certified for human spaceflight first. And SpaceX has flown four successful crewed missions to ISS -- versus Boeing, which hasn't yet sent any astronauts there aboard its Starliner spacecraft.

Simply put, against all odds, SpaceX proved itself more reliable than Boeing.

 More: https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/09/18/starliner-will-fly-6-times-and-maybe-never-again/