“It fits into the general story of Boeing has lost its way” says McDowell.
Starliner, like Crew Dragon, is a capsule-shaped spacecraft like the Apollo missions of old. The spacecraft can carry up to seven astronauts and is largely autonomous, requiring a major deployment only in the event of an emergency. During the test mission that begins tonight, Wilmore and Williams will test this capability, purposefully steering the spacecraft off course to ensure they can manually get it back on track, as well as assessing the spacecraft's overall life support and navigation systems . While docked with the space station, the vehicle will undergo further testing, including practicing its use as a rescue boat in case astronauts need to evacuate the ISS.
Starliner is reusable, with Boeing saying it can be flown on up to 10 missions. The spacecraft – unlike Crew Dragon – has no toilet and has about the same livable volume as an SUV, making for a relatively pleasant climb to and from space. It has physical hand controls and switches that allow the astronauts to control the spacecraft, unlike the touch screens used in Crew Dragon. Upon returning home, a heat shield protects the occupants from temperatures of about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit before the vehicle descends under parachute and eventually lands, with the help of airbags to cushion the fall, at one of the many desert landing sites in the US.
Boeing has a contract with NASA to launch Starliner to the ISS six times after this test mission, each time carrying four or five astronauts along with cargo for a six-month stay aboard the station. The spacecraft will alternate its missions with Crew Dragon, with one launching around February and one around August each year. Having that redundancy is hugely beneficial, says NASA's Steven Siceloff, public affairs specialist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. “If a technical problem occurs in this way on one vehicle, it does not mean that the space station will be isolated for a while,” he says. “It means there are alternatives.”
Laura Forczyk, founder of the space consultancy Astralytical, notes that redundancy is “particularly important now because of the unreliability of Russia.” NASA and Russia's Roscosmos space agency will continue to collaborate on the ISS program for now, including seat-sharing between the Russian Soyuz vehicle Crew Dragon and now Starliner, despite the bitter political situation between the two nations.
But outside of these six missions, Boeing currently has no published flights planned for Starliner. “If this were SpaceX, Musk would already be talking about three or four contracts he had with famous people,” McDowell says. With the ISS also done abolished in 2030this could mean that Starliner – despite ten years of development and billions of dollars spent – will only be able to fly a handful of times. “We don't know if Boeing has the capacity to do more commercial missions right now,” says Forczyk.
NASA has been trying to encourage the development of new technologies commercial space stations, in the same way as this commercial crew program, in the hope that they can fill the orbital research gap left when the ISS ends. These commercial stations could be destinations for Starliner and Crew Dragon if they materialize, but exact interest in this endeavor remains uncertain for now. “Is there enough of a market to sustain two entities doing this?” says McDowell. “I remain skeptical of commercial space stations. But if they succeed, you want multiple options to go up and down.”
Before it grapples with that future, Boeing is simply hoping for a smooth and successful first crewed flight with Starliner. Once the spacecraft is finally in the air with humans on board, it can begin to play the role for which it has long been praised.