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In June, two NASA astronauts flew to the International Space Station on a Boeing spacecraft for a week-long test mission. But problems with the machinery mean they’ll be stuck there for 8 months… and when they come back in February, they won’t be flying Boeing. Instead, they’re hitching a ride with the company’s biggest rival in commercial space travel: Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Today on the show: space reporter Loren Grush and Boeing reporter Julie Johnsson on the challenges facing Boeing’s space program, the rise of SpaceX, and the future of NASA’s ambitions beyond our planet.
Further listening: Boeing Faces Washington and Wall Street Reckonings
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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
Sarah Holder: When American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded a Boeing Starliner spacecraft back in June, they were expecting to spend about a week on the International Space Station… and then they’d fly home.
But it’s now the end of August. And Butch and Suni… are still up there.
The Starliner spacecraft that delivered them to the ISS ran into some problems on the way up. And as NASA looked into what went wrong… it kept delaying the astronauts’ return. Bloomberg space reporter Loren Grush was watching the drama unfold…
Loren Grush: As time wore on we started to get the sense that, okay, maybe NASA isn't so comfortable with bringing the Starliner crew home on Starliner.
Holder: On Saturday, NASA administrator and former US Senator Bill Nelson announced that the astronauts wouldn’t be making it home this summer. Or this fall…
Bill Nelson: NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew 9 next February…
Holder: Next February. And not on a Boeing Starliner. The astronauts are scheduled to fly back with Boeing’s chief rival in commercial space travel… Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Julie Johnsson: They've sparred for a decade or more, so to have Elon Musk, of all people, rescuing their crew is just really terrible optics.
Holder: Julie Johnsson is Bloomberg’s Boeing beat reporter. Boeing can’t seem to stay out of the news this year… first, a commercial plane part fell off a 737 MAX – and now, these astronauts are set to get a ride home from the company’s fiercest competitor—at least as far as its space portfolio is concerned.
This all might look like a win for SpaceX and a loss for Boeing — and it’s the latest chapter in a battle for dominance in space travel. But there’s a lot more at stake here than just a corporate rivalry.
Today on the show… two astronauts, two companies, and one return mission.
What the NASA astronaut saga means for Boeing… what it tells us about SpaceX’s growing presence in the space travel industry… and how it could affect the US government’s future ambitions beyond our planet.
This is the Big Take DC podcast. I’m Sarah Holder.
It’s been a particularly chaotic few weeks for space reporters like Loren Grush…
Grush: Months, really, um, I mean, years, how far back do we want to go, uh, with this mission?
Holder: We’ll start back in 2014, when NASA chose companies for its “Commercial Crew Program.”
Grush: The commercial crew program was a bit of a radical change for NASA where they would act more like a customer.
Holder: The idea was, NASA would pay private companies to develop spacecraft to fly their astronauts to the ISS. For NASA, it meant spending less of its own resources developing and testing this tech—or relying less on Russian spacecraft, which was complicated for geopolitical reasons.
And it was a good deal for the companies, too:
Grush: NASA said it would give a lump sum of money, kind of like seed investment, and, once the capsules were complete, NASA would buy rides for its astronauts on those vehicles, but the companies would ultimately own the vehicles themselves, so that they could then use them to turn a profit later by selling commercial tickets on their flights.
Holder: At the time, there was one clear frontrunner in the commercial spacecraft industry. Boeing.
Johnsson: Actually, Boeing's a space pioneer.
Holder: That’s Boeing reporter Julie Johnsson.
Johnsson: They were instrumental in the Apollo program in the sixties. They rescued the Saturn rocket at the time, the world's biggest rocket, that was used to take astronauts to the moon and they're the prime contractor for the International Space Station. So they had definitely the advantages of an incumbent.
Holder: When it came time for NASA to award its Commercial Crew contracts, Loren says, there were some major players pushing for Boeing to get all of the money.
Grush: I spoke with Lori Garver, who was a deputy administrator at the time, and she really spearheaded this program and a lot of members of Congress and then Boeing themselves and NASA management really lobbied hard for Boeing to be the only ones to receive the contract according to Lori.
Holder: But Lori and others at NASA decided there should really be two providers in the mix. They didn’t want to rely on Boeing alone.
Grush: And there are a number of reasons to do that. One, you know, it kind of inspired a friendly competition to see who would be first to launch people on these vehicles. And then also, kind of illustrates, you know, why we need two providers with this whole saga is that, you know, if there was a problem with one vehicle, they would have another American-made non-Russian vehicle that could get its astronauts into orbit.
Holder: NASA awarded two contracts: $4.2 billion dollars to Boeing… and $2.6 billion dollars to what was then a plucky upstart. Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Grush: They were very much the underdog in this race.
Holder: And how has that friendly competition gone? How have Boeing and SpaceX each performed since that 2014 contract award?
Grush: Right, so for years and years, they did appear outwardly to be kind of neck and neck in terms of their development. When they first handed out launch contracts in 2014, they expected these vehicles to launch as early as 2017. But nobody made that deadline.
Holder: But soon, SpaceX started to pull ahead, with a series of successful launches.
Johnsson: And then they just pushed it beyond anything anybody's ever done.
SpaceX: LV1 the Falcon has landed… history in the making guys… [cheers]
Johnsson: Their performance has just been extraordinary and outstanding.
Holder: Julie says, SpaceX did have a few key advantages.
Johnsson: SpaceX was delivering cargo to the space station and so they were able to modify this craft that they already had whereas Boeing was starting from scratch.
Holder: They were also a buzzy startup:
Johnsson: Suddenly they were the cool company everyone wanted to go work for. They were the visionaries.
Holder: And they used a startup business model. The move-fast-and-break-things mentality of Silicon Valley.
Grush: One of the ways that SpaceX likes to test is by launching things very early on in their development, and knowing that they might not necessarily succeed, but pushing them to their limits until they break and then learning from those quote unquote failures and incorporating those lessons learned into the next flight. So we've seen quite a number of explosions there. But with each subsequent test launch, they push the envelope farther, have fewer explosions, so they've definitely learning and iterating.
Holder: And in 2020, SpaceX had a major breakthrough:
AP: 3, 2, 1, 0. Ignition. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon…
Holder: It successfully sent its first spacecraft crewed with NASA astronauts to the ISS.
AP: Go NASA! Go SpaceX! Godspeed Bob and Doug!
Holder: Since that first successful crewed launch in 2020, SpaceX has sent nine separate crews of NASA astronauts up to the ISS. And as for Boeing…
Grush: Where do I want to begin? [laughs]
Holder: When Boeing first launched its Starliner spacecraft in an uncrewed test back in 2019…
Grush: The vehicle suffered a number of software glitches which ultimately prevented the vehicle from reaching the International Space Station as planned.
Holder: From there, NASA did a big review of the program and agreed that Boeing would do a do-over mission. Another uncrewed test flight.
Grush: But then just before they were about to launch, they discovered a number of corroded valves on the vehicle and ultimately had to roll it back to the hangar. And that delayed them up to another year before they were able to launch that mission again.
Holder: The Starliner capsule launched successfully in May of 2022. And finally, two years later, in May of this year, Boeing was ready to launch a crewed flight, with two astronauts, up to the ISS.
But when it came time to launch… it had some issue with a valve. Boeing replaced it… but then found a helium leak. After a few weeks, they decided it was safe to move ahead, even with that leak.
Grush: So we were really eager to see this launch take place because of all of the problems that they've had. And it seemed as if that they might have finally overcome all of these issues.
Holder: Loren was there in Cape Canaveral for that launch…
Grush: So we had gotten down to, I want to say a couple minutes to the liftoff and then they delayed it. And I remember on that attempt, I sunk to my knees cause I was so frustrated. [laughs]
Holder: It had to do with a computer that didn’t perform properly and triggered an abort. Another false start.
But finally, on June 5:
AP - Butch Wilmore: Suni and I are honored to share this dream of space flight with each and every one of you. Let's get going.
BTV: Six, five, four, three, two, one…
Holder: Boeing’s Starliner launched, with two astronauts on board.
BTV: Ignition, and liftoff of Starliner and Atlas 5, carrying two American heroes…
Holder: But shortly after launch, things started to go wrong.
After the break: How the Starliner test flight got messy. And how SpaceX… stepped in.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams reached the International Space Station safely on June 6. But on the way up, their Boeing Starliner had more helium leaks. And some thrusters on the spacecraft failed and had to be rebooted. So NASA and Boeing turned to the task of figuring out what went wrong. And after weeks of analysis, they decided the Starliner shouldn’t take Butch and Suni back to Earth.
Instead, they’d hitch a ride on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which is making the next planned mission to and from the ISS.
Johnsson: When it came down to it, NASA doesn't have the tolerance for risk, rightfully so, that it once did.
Holder: NASA administrator Bill Nelson spoke at a news conference last weekend. He evoked the deadly Challenger explosion in 1986 and the disintegration of the Columbia shuttle during re-entry in 2003.
Nelson: We have had mistakes done in the past. We lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward.
Johnsson: The agency has a much different approach to safety these days. And it's not like they were out of options. They knew SpaceX was sending a capsule up that could bring Butch and Suni back next year.
Holder: What does it mean for Boeing financially that these astronauts are now stuck for an extra six months and this launch failed, essentially?
Johnsson: The economics for this program are not looking good. Oh, and by the way, Boeing's in chaos. They've not made an annual profit this decade. They've got a new CEO with a mandate to come in and look at everything with a fresh eye.
Holder: So did some of the problems that are plaguing Boeing's airplane division also have an impact on the spacecraft program?
Johnsson: 100%. Yeah. You know, why things break apart, or organizations fail, these are really complex dynamic that play out, you know, over hundreds or thousands of decisions, little decisions that chip away at expertise.
Holder: Julie says, much like the problems with Boeing’s 737 Max civilian jets, some of the Starliner problems likely come down to oversight. Failing to properly regulate the work of outside contractors. And a culture that employees say has discouraged them from speaking up about issues.
All that has come at a high price for the company.
Johnsson: Because of the delays on Starliner, Boeing had already lost about $1.6 billion on this program. And the contract is only for six astronaut flights once NASA clears Starliner to carry, you know, regular humans. So that's not, there's no way you recover that amount of money over six trips.
Holder: What do we know about how Boeing is weighing the costs and benefits of remaining involved in the Commercial Crew Program itself?
Johnsson: You've got a new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, who has a free pass from Wall Street, from investors and stakeholders to go in and to make the tough decisions. And in context, what they care about is getting the commercial airplane division back on track. This is, it's a distraction.
Not to minimize it. It's, you know, I mean, it's US space flight. There are geopolitical ramifications for this, but if you're a Boeing investor, it's a really small program. And I think there'd be some understanding that yeah, Boeing can't do everything. And let's just focus on the key businesses and get them right.
Holder: Over the weekend, Boeing shared a statement with Bloomberg, saying “Boeing continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return.”
In the meantime, for SpaceX, being tapped to bring the astronauts home bolsters their image as a reliable partner to the US government — a company that’s matured beyond the days of viral rocket explosions.
Grush: I think there's probably a lot of pride in being able to answer this call for NASA.
The point of picking two providers is really for this exact scenario. You just don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.
Holder: And in the coming years, having commercial partners in space is only going to become more important for NASA. And that could mean more opportunities for SpaceX to make its mark.
Grush: You know, its Falcon 9 rocket has become the most prolific rocket on the face of the earth right now. So, SpaceX has really worked to become more and more routine and reliable as a launch provider.
Holder: But SpaceX still has its bad days. Just this week, the company’s primary Falcon 9 rocket was grounded by federal regulators, after a failed landing. This quite literally IS rocket science. And it’s not always easy to get it right.
In the meantime, those two astronauts will be orbiting Earth for a lot longer than they planned.
But they seem to be doing alright. We’ve heard from the astronauts themselves in one press conference since they landed on the ISS. Here’s Suni Williams:
Suni Williams: We are having a great time here on ISS. You know, Butch and I have been up here before, and it feels like coming back home. It feels good to float around, it feels good to be in space and work up here with the International Space Station team…
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