Boeing's Failed Starliner Test Flight Is Still A Big Problem For NASA

[Elderberry]

BGR by Joshua Hawkins  1/13/2026

Boeing's Starliner had it rough from the start. With a long, storied history of issues, the spacecraft finally defied all the odds against it last year, lifting off into space with two astronauts aboard. There were concerns — specifically related to some helium leaks — but NASA gave the okay and the craft was away, soon making its docking debut with the International Space Station (ISS). However, when it came time to climb back in and head home, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams found themselves stranded on the ISS for nine months, a far cry from the original two weeks they were meant to spend aboard.

The culprit of the issue was those very same helium leaks that NASA had almost brushed off in earlier tests. And while leaks in space are troubling, it's the nature of these leaks that made them such a disaster. That's because while NASA downplayed the issues overall, the Starliner fiasco was actually a lot worse than advertised, with both astronauts unsure if the Boeing Starliner spacecraft would even be able to make it back down to Earth reliably, thanks to it losing four of its 28 critical reaction control thrusters.

Four lost thrusters might not sound like a lot, but with just one more thruster failure, the astronauts would have been unable to control the spacecraft's movement at all. That's a particularly dangerous proposition when approaching a moving space station in orbit around the planet — especially a station that's crewed. To make things worse, NASA didn't tell the astronauts about the entire state of affairs right away, sparking more concerns from participants of a recent safety panel looking into the issue.

Continued trouble and mismanagement

Of course, the controversy didn't end following the wrap-up of the mission. Since the astronauts' return to Earth, and Starliner's return to the surface of the planet, NASA has been looking into what happened, trying get a better idea of where things went wrong. This led the space agency to make a significant change to Starliner's next planned mission, choosing to go unmanned instead of trusting the spacecraft with human lives again.

More: https://www.bgr.com/2070397/boeing-failed-starliner-test-flight-problem-nasa/

[DefiantMassRINO]

If there are safe, proven, competitive options to the StarLiner, use them and cancel the StarLiner.  Put the project back out to bid, and engage multiple competitors to prototype multiple potential options.

Single-vendor procurement is a recipe for disaster, failure, delays, and cost over-runs.  When businesses establish monopoly-power, market-power, and pricing-power - performance and efficiency are no longer required for survival.  Like the Dodo bird, they get fat and flightless.

In nature, trees shed leaves once they consume more than they produce.  The tree does this to avoid starvation during the Winter.  If the leaves continue to consume more than they produce, the tree would starve.

The largest expense of inefficiency, is opportunity cost.  The opporunity to use those same resources for more productive endeavors is lost.  Trees burned in wildfires cost the opportunity to use them for lumber.