Calamity capsule: Boeing's Starliner losses approaching $1B
- Reference: 1666891810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/10/27/starliner_losses_closing_in_on/
- Source link:
Boeing's [1]Q3 quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that it lost $195 million for the quarter, and $288 million for the year to date, thanks to Starliner, which has been beset by repeated hardware and software problems that have kept the craft grounded.
Combined with reported Starliner losses going back to late 2019, Boeing's total loss from the program has now reached $883 million. The biggest of these was a $410 million charge in Q4 2019 after [2]two serious software bugs prevented Boeing's Starliner from docking with the International Space Station in December that year, putting the spacecraft at risk.
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This quarter, Boeing said Starliner's losses were primarily due to "increases to estimated costs related to completing the crewed flight tests and revised schedules for both the crewed flight test and three post certification missions," the company told the SEC.
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Boeing also recorded a $93 million charge in Q2, "driven by launch manifest updates and additional costs associated with OFT-2", and in [6]October last year took a $185 million charge against its earnings to cover the costs of getting the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle flying again.
When it contracted with NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station along with SpaceX, Boeing said it had expected the three post-certification missions it had agreed to with NASA to be completed by 2024. The repeated delays affecting Starliner have forced those missions back, so they're now expected to be completed by 2026, Boeing said.
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As we've noted several times before, Space-X, Boeing's major competitor in commercial spaceflight and NASA's other commercial crew mission partner, has been flying astronauts to the International Space Station [8]since 2020 .
SpaceX has signed [9]multiple extensions to its contract with NASA since agreeing to be a commercial launch partner in 2014.
More like Star-lyin'there
Starliner's first flight in the waning hours of 2019 [10]went poorly when software on the craft caused a timer error that led to the CST-100 capsule's onboard clock being [11]11 hours off by the time it launched. Once in orbit, Starliner burned through its fuel, thinking it was further along in the mission timeline than it was, resulting in a planned docking with the ISS being abandoned.
[12]SpaceX crewed flight to ISS delayed by damaged rocket
[13]NASA's CAPSTONE silence down to a software flaw
[14]Boeing's Starliner CST-100 on its way to the ISS 2 years late
[15]Boeing's Starliner capsule corroded due to high humidity levels, NASA explains, and the spaceship won't fly this year
By August 2021 Starliner was set for a second uncrewed test launch, which was scrubbed when 13 of the valves that controlled the capsule's propulsion system [16]failed pre-flight checks , leading to the capsule having to be returned for repairs that weren't able to be made on site.
In October, NASA decided to pull astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, slated for Starliner's first crewed flight test and first official crewed mission, from the project. The pair were reassigned to a SpaceX Dragon launch, and recently docked with the ISS on its [17]Crew-5 mission .
"NASA decided it was important to make these reassignments to allow Boeing time to complete the development of Starliner while continuing plans for astronauts to gain spaceflight experience for the future needs of the agency's missions," NASA said at the time.
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The valve issue [19]kept CST-100 grounded until this past May, when it finally reached orbit and successfully docked - uncrewed - with the ISS. A crewed Starliner mission is now planned for [20]some time in 2023.
As to whether Boeing thinks Starliner will stop creating drag on profits now that it has made it to space, the company isn't that optimistic. "Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods," Boeing told the SEC. ®
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[1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000012927/000001292722000073/ba-20220930.htm
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/10/more_software_errors_beset_boeings_calamity_capsule/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y1r-dkIGvpefLjKnRATpCwAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y1r-dkIGvpefLjKnRATpCwAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y1r-dkIGvpefLjKnRATpCwAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=130949
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y1r-dkIGvpefLjKnRATpCwAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/30/space_in_brief/
[9] https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/31/tech/nasa-spacex-crew-launches-contract-extension-scn
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/23/cst_100_lands/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/10/more_software_errors_beset_boeings_calamity_capsule/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/23/spacex_falcon_accident/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/08/capstone_software_bug/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/20/boeing_starliner/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/21/boeings_starliner_fail/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/13/boeing_starliner_delay/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/07/spacex_crew5_iss/
[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y1r-dkIGvpefLjKnRATpCwAAAMI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/21/boeings_starliner_fail/
[20] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-targets-early-2023-first-starliner-mission-carrying-astronauts-2022-08-25/
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: That's what you get when you play the "We're the *safe* pair of hands" card
So do they get a special NASA extra $1Bn payment for R&D into "testing procedures for spacecraft" or do they get a $1Bn black ops budget payment for a secret project so secret nobody can be told what it is.
Cos no way are any of our elected leaders letting Boeing getting into trouble.
Re: That's what you get when you play the "We're the *safe* pair of hands" card
That's why their military contracts are always "cost plus" so they don't have to worry about losing money like they are with Starliner. Those contracts are much much larger, so that $1 billion loss is probably wiped out in a month's worth of a military contract's "plus".
Re: That's what you get when you play the "We're the *safe* pair of hands" card
What a good job Nasa chose two partners. It just goes to show diversification can work.
To be clear: well done SpaceX. :-)
Could be worse
Boeing lost less on a real space ship than Meta lost on fictional junk.
I hope Boeing have given proper thought to just giving up on this contract. It's a huge money pit for them and they'll never make it back.
They had a plan ...
Starliner seats 5. NASA buys 4 of those seats for a price that was expected to cover costs and a reasonable profit. Boeing could then sell the fifth seat for a price competitive with Dragon and take all of that as profit. Costs have grown, the price is fixed and the fifth seat only earns money when the vehicle is fully operational.
If that were not enough, there are enough Atlas Vs reserved for the contracted Starliner launches. Anything beyond that requires either human rating Vulcan or convincing other customers to switch their reserved Atlas for a Vulcan. Vulcans requires 2 BE-4 engines each. One was delivered very late, another has not yet been delivered. Evidence for engines 3 and 4 would have been all over the rocket focused web sites if there was any. All I have heard of is an increased number of cars parked outside the factory.
NASA wants two independent human rated vehicles to assure access to space. Long term that is looking more and more like Dragon and Starship. Very long term, the small launch startups are talking about medium sized rockets for constellations (because the small launch market is far too small to support more than SpaceX + Rocket Lab). Some of that talk might turn into a real rocket big enough to launch people.
Just another McDonnell Douglas management clusterf*ck...
Remember the good old days at Boeing. Before the late 1990's. When only every fourth or fifth project turned into a flaming train wreck. Financial or engineering.
Has any project started at Boeing after the last old line Boeing management was pushed out in the early 2000's not turned into a catastrophic disaster of some form or other. In the old days only McDonnell Douglas civil aircraft killed punters in large numbers due to engineering or management incompetence and malfeasance. But now Boeing is quickly catching up to the McDonnell Douglas kill count with the 737 Max and I am sure other horrors yet to happen.
Boeing is now little more than the walking dead. Just like IBM. The most humane solution is to take it out the back of the wood shed and put it out of its misery. Before it kills lots more people.
That's what you get when you play the "We're the *safe* pair of hands" card
And it turns out you're not.
The NASA contract they picked up is worth multii $Bn and their failure to deliver very damm much of anything is not very impressive.
The whole company looks like they've gone to s**t.