Boeing Starliner

[N0ddie]

Some reports now suggesting March 2024 for the first crewed flight. That's another huge delay.

What sort of fines/penalties would Boeing incur if it was to just scrap the Starliner program?

[Beati Dogu]

I don’t think they can just cancel it for all sorts of reasons. They’re also supposed to be using Starliner for flights to the planned private space station, Orbital Reef. They need to get it working.

Meanwhile, SpaceX are due to launch Crew-7 to the ISS on 25th August.

[Flooble]

With Starliner only rated to launch on Atlas, and all the Atlas boosters now booked, what booster would Boeing use to launch any other Starliner missions?

Since they only have two capsules (each rated for 10 flights) they don't have a huge amount of contingency.

E.g. if they complete the Crew Flight Test and the remaining 6 operational missions that will be a total of OFT-1, OFT-2, CFT, Crew1-6 = 9 missions. I'd expect that if they had to put the capsule on a new booster, even if they were allowed to hand-wave the Pad Abort Test and In-Flight Abort test again, there would at least be an uncrewed test flight and a crewed test flight before they started doing operational launches? Leaving them with just nine further flights, and assuming they actually achieve the 10-flight reuse target (my uninformed gut tells me that they probably won't, with some "unexpected issue" limiting reuse)

[MartG]

Flooble said:

With Starliner only rated to launch on Atlas, and all the Atlas boosters now booked, what booster would Boeing use to launch any other Starliner missions?

My feeling is that they are hoping NASA will pay for man-rating the Vulcan, rather than Boeing having to pay for it themselves. Not sure who paid to man-rate the Atlas V.

Of course they'd never consider putting it on a Falcon 9

[Beati Dogu]

Starliner is supposed to be platform independent, so that includes Falcon 9. Stranger things have happened. What with them trying to offload ULA, they might just want the cheapest lift to space they can get.

Looking at the Orbital Reef blurb, they just mention Boeing will build one of the modules and provide crew transport with Starliner. I can’t see any mention of what rocket it would use. Even New Glenn potentially. Who knows; it’s al vapourware at the moment anyway.