While Boeing has struggled with Starliner, SpaceX has soared

SpaceX has become the world’s leading space company, leveraging its lucrative contracts and relationship with NASA to design a rocket and spacecraft that helped it disrupt the space market, restoring human spaceflight to the United States after the retire the space shuttle and build a multi-billion dollar space. dollar company that now launches a rocket once every few days.

Boeing, on the other hand, is now finally ready to launch its first human spaceflight mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 10:52 a.m. Wednesday after two launch attempts were scrapped due to mechanical problems with the rocket. Boeing has suffered mechanical and software problems with its Starliner spacecraft that cost $1.4 billion, causing cost overruns and doing immeasurable damage to its reputation as the nation’s premier aerospace company.

The first flight with people on board was canceled again on Saturday, this time because of a computer problem with the rocket, operated by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The flight would take NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore to the International Space Station and last about eight days, in a mission to test how the spacecraft operates in space with humans on board.

Once Boeing completes the flight, NASA would certify Starliner to fly regular crew rotation missions to the space station, with a full contingent of four astronauts on board for six-month stays. NASA was eager to let Boeing fly so it would give the space agency another spacecraft besides SpaceX, which has been flying crews to the station since 2020.

While Boeing has struggled, the delays stand in stark contrast to SpaceX’s success, and highlight the gulf between the way the two companies operate. Despite growing to more than 10,000 employees across multiple locations, SpaceX still performs like a scrappy, fluid startup. It innovates quickly, tests hardware until it breaks, sometimes even causes explosions, then makes adjustments and tries again and again until it gets right. Rather than contracting with other companies for many of the parts used in its vehicles, SpaceX builds many of its rockets and spacecraft in-house.

As a major defense contractor, Boeing operates in a more traditional manner, flying when it believes all hardware and subsystems have been thoroughly tested on the ground. The commercial crew contract’s “fixed price” structure, meaning the companies absorb any cost overruns, has been a difficult adjustment for Boeing, which typically had “cost-plus” contracts with the government that reimbursed the company if it went bankrupt. budget.

So the upcoming crewed flight is a crucial milestone, one that Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator, says is an “existential” moment for the company.

Boeing’s first crewed test flight was initially scheduled for May 6, but a few hours before the scheduled launch time, teams noticed that a valve that regulates the pressure and pushes the flow of propellants on the second stage of the Atlas V rocket was malfunctioning and the launch was aborted. . Teams replaced the valve, but then discovered a helium leak in the spacecraft’s propulsion system, which officials said is so small it would not pose a problem to the flight.

On Saturday, Starliner was in the final four minutes of the countdown to launch when an automated computer aborted the launch because one of the computer systems was slow to come online. If Wednesday’s attempt is scrapped, NASA has said Boeing could try again on Thursday. After that, however, the Atlas V rocket would have to roll back from the launch pad to replace the batteries, which would delay the flight by at least another ten days.

In the lead-up to the test mission, NASA and Boeing repeatedly said they would take the utmost care to ensure the flight was as safe as possible, and that the lives of the astronauts on board would be their top priority. Delays are normal in spaceflight, especially when there are people aboard a spacecraft that has never flown with people before.

However, it has been a long and painful road to reach this point. In December 2019, Boeing thought Starliner was ready for its first test flight without anyone on board. It didn’t go well. The autonomous capsule’s onboard computer was turned off for eleven hours, so the spacecraft began executing commands for a completely different part of the flight.

Engineers soon discovered a second software problem, which could cause the service module to collide with the crew capsule during separation before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. The problems were so serious that NASA officials said the spacecraft could have been lost by either, threatening the lives of astronauts had anyone been on board. The flight never reached the space station, but returned successfully.

The next launch attempt, in 2021, never got off the ground because several valves in the capsule’s service module were corroded shut. The aircraft ultimately flew a successful unmanned flight to the station in 2022, but subsequently discovered flammable tape in the capsule that had to be removed, as well as problems with the parachute system.

NASA and Boeing said in April that they had resolved all those issues and were ready to go. “I can say with confidence that the teams absolutely did their due diligence,” said James Free, NASA Associate Administrator. The test flight has since been postponed five times.

SpaceX also initially suffered a series of setbacks that affected NASA. Two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets exploded, one in 2015 and the other in 2016. And during a 2019 test of the emergency shutdown system, the Dragon capsule that was supposed to carry astronauts also exploded.

But since then, SpaceX has flown multiple missions for NASA, taking private astronauts to the space station and into orbit. It has also received an extension to its contract with NASA to fly astronaut missions.

The relationship with NASA had been built up for a long time. SpaceX initially won a contract in 2006 as part of a program to develop cargo transportation to the space station, an award that essentially saved it from bankruptcy. In 2008, it won a $1.6 billion contract to fly resupply missions to the station.

As NASA began to rely on its rockets and spacecraft, SpaceX argued that the Pentagon should too, and eventually the company began winning contracts to fly some of the nation’s most sensitive national security satellites to space.

The government’s investments in SpaceX, as well as the company’s high number of flights, in-house production and efficient business practices – along with CEO Elon Musk’s relentless drive to make his employees work harder and faster – have made launches possible at prices far lower than those of its competitors, which in turn has enabled it to generate more sales and revenues.

As the company has grown, SpaceX has turned to building a constellation of satellites called Starlink that allows users to access the Internet even from remote locations. SpaceX now operates about 6,000 Starlink satellites and says it has 3 million customers.

In addition to flying the Falcon 9 rocket, which launched nearly 100 times last year, an unprecedented pace, it is now developing its next-generation Starship rocket, the most powerful ever flown.

As SpaceX’s capabilities have grown, so has NASA’s confidence and investment in the company.

In 2021, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to use Starship to land astronauts on the moon. On each of the first three test flights, Starship has made methodical progress. The fourth could come as early as Thursday, the day Boeing hopes Starliner will finally reach the space station.