The various technical setbacks have pushed Starliner's first flight with people aboard into an unknown future, placing it far behind Musk's SpaceX, whose Crew Dragon capsule, developed under the same NASA program as Starliner, has already flown five astronaut crews for the U.S. Thirteen fuel valves that are part of a propulsion system that helps steer Starliner in space were discovered stuck and unresponsive in the closed position, prompting last year's postponement.
The Boeing statement said that "we are working on short- and long-term design changes to the valves." Facing fixed-price NASA contracts that leave Boeing with little wiggle room financially, the company has pressed forward with the Starliner test.īoeing in a statement provided by a spokesperson to Reuters acknowledged for the first time that it ultimately intends to redesign Starliner's valve system to prevent a repeat of the issue that forced last year's test-flight postponement. The Aerojet dispute is the latest illustration of Boeing's struggles with Starliner, a program costing the company $595 million in charges since 2019. The disagreement, which has not been reported before, comes at time when Boeing already is scrambling to emerge from successive crises that have hobbled its jetliner business and drained cash. Chicago-based Boeing and El Segundo, California-based Aerojet are at odds over the cause of a problem involving fuel valves in the Starliner propulsion system that forced a postponement of a test flight last July, with the two companies faulting one another, the sources said.
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