CNBC by Michael Sheetz 3/30/2023
Overview: Boeing’s got to get going“Boeing pushed back the flight schedule of its Starliner capsule by several months, the company said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday.”
That sentence holds true this week – but the problem is, I wrote it five years ago.
At the time, Boeing and SpaceX were seen as neck-and-neck in a race to finish development of their respective crewed spacecraft and be the first to fly NASA astronauts. Even then, each company had faced its share of delays, but NASA estimated flight tests were months apart. Until they weren’t.
Fast forward to the present. Boeing and SpaceX each won contracts to fly six operational missions with astronauts. The latter is poised to finish nearly all of its six before the former even flies a crewed demo mission.
I’m not advocating for anything akin to “go fever” for Boeing’s upcoming Starliner crewed flight test (CFT), which just got delayed from mid-April to late July. Instead, I’m calling for much needed transparency and clarity about a largely taxpayer-funded development program. Listening to the press conference yesterday, I found it impossible to believe that NASA and Boeing just realized that launching in three weeks was no longer feasible, especially given the track record of delays.
More:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/investing-in-space-boeings-got-to-get-going.html
