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Commercialization

Boeing Will Refly Uncrewed Starliner At Its Own Expense

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 6, 2020
Filed under ,
Boeing Will Refly Uncrewed Starliner At Its Own Expense

Boeing Statement on Starliner’s Next Flight
“The Boeing Company is honored to be a provider for the Commercial Crew mission. We are committed to the safety of the men and women who design, build and ultimately will fly on the Starliner just as we have on every crewed mission to space. We have chosen to refly our Orbital Flight Test to demonstrate the quality of the Starliner system. Flying another uncrewed flight will allow us to complete all flight test objectives and evaluate the performance of the second Starliner vehicle at no cost to the taxpayer. We will then proceed to the tremendous responsibility and privilege of flying astronauts to the International Space Station.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

27 responses to “Boeing Will Refly Uncrewed Starliner At Its Own Expense”

  1. James in Southern Illinois says:
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    Good if Boeing wants the contract they should be paying the development cost,

    • fcrary says:
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      Almost. NASA has paid for some of the development cost. That was part of the contract. But, as a firm fixed price contract, Boeing paid part of development cost, and has to pay for any cost overruns. Including added development cost due to, er, underperformance during a test flight.

      • James in Southern Illinois says:
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        I know NASA paid a lot already they gave Boeing a far better deal then SpaceX. It’s time to level the playing field.

        • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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          Bit late for that. Boeing was paid pretty much twice what SX received plus they got extra on the bs of sticking to the schedule IIRC or something like that.
          Cheers
          Neil

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Actually that’s no quite right. Boeing and SX submitted blind proposals. The numbers were different.

          • ed2291 says:
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            Blind proposal or not, we paid Boeing quite a bit more for shoddy work that was late. In addition, Boeing got an extra bonus that Space X did not for no good reason other than graft.

          • fcrary says:
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            The point about blind proposals is that the proposals were not selected by comparing them back to back. NASA selected the best two they received (according to the reviews and whatever programatic reasons were applied.) One turned out, on its own merits and flaws and regardless of the other proposal selected, to be a really bad deal for NASA. The other, again on its own merits and flaws, turned out to be a very good deal for NASA.

            The cost is more-or-less a take it or leave it matter. Since Boeing’s proposal asked for $4.2 billion, that’s what NASA had to pay by selecting Boeing. They couldn’t select Boeing and order them to do it for $3 billion. Since SpaceX’ proposal asked for $2.6 billion, that’s what NASA had to pay by selecting SpaceX. And, yes, the numbers do change between the proposal and the contract, but usually not by much and due to negotiated changes in the statement of work. But that’s independent of the other company’s proposal and contract.

  2. Winner says:
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    After Columbia and Challenger, good to know NASA is taking the cautious and sensible approach.

  3. Matthew Black says:
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    Good.

  4. Henry Vanderbilt says:
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    Good. Boeing must have private-polled on how badly their corporate image has suffered lately, then actually paid attention to the results.

    Mind, I hope Boeing’s various government customers have some sharp-eyed accountants watching that “at no cost to the taxpayer” part.

    • fcrary says:
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      That’s one place where the inefficiency of most government contracts helps. Especially for cost-plus contracts, the accounting requirements are substantial (and expensive.) The costs are passed along to the government, which is inefficient. But it means those “sharp-eyed accountants” do have tons of information to watch for a contractor attempting some sort of creative accounting. Whether or not anything is done with that information is a different matter, but at least the government agencies involved have a high level of visibility into how much the contractor is billing for what. Boeing could not, for example, cover part of the Starliner reflight costs by having employees bill time to Boeing’s SLS contract. That would raise big red flags in the required cost reporting to NASA.

      • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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        Never say never. Anyone else remember when Rockwell was charging B-1 program labor hours against Shuttle to hide overruns back in the 80’s?

        • fcrary says:
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          I shouldn’t have said that could’t happen. (Although I didn’t know about the B-1/Shuttle case.) What I should have said is that that sort of thing stands out in the required accounting. That means there is at least a possibility of the NASA and DoD noticing and complaining. It’s the difference between having the information (which is an important first step), paying attention to the information and doing something about it. Having the information at least makes doing something about it possible. Whether or not that possibility is worth the higher overhead costs, especially if the information isn’t acted on, is a different question. In most cases, I don’t think it is. But overall? I’m not sure but I also doubt anyone has ever gone over the books to prove it, one way or another.

          • Henry Vanderbilt says:
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            Consider too the possibility of someone at a hypothetical customer actively wanting to make things easier for their prime contractor (whether for political reasons or for a future career at the contractor) and thus not looking too closely at details of where the funding actually comes from.

        • Bad Horse says:
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          late 79-81

        • Luke Franck says:
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          I learned something, thank you Henry

    • Ignacio Rockwill says:
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      Dave Calhoun asking “How bad are we looking?” could be an SNL sketch. Kinda reminds of Gavin Belson watching the focus group in Silicon Valley. Boeing is a train wreck. Sad.

  5. JJMach says:
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    I get that there is a non-trivial amount of face-saving going on here, but what percentage of this is “We have chosen….” vs. “NASA has told us that we must….”? The way the presser reads (no big surprise), Boeing is magnanimously doing this out of the warm, graciousness of their hearts, and not the fact that NASA might have seriously considered cutting their losses if Boeing refused to re-fly the test.

    • fcrary says:
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      I doubt NASA would have dropped Boeing, and they’d have a hard time showing Boeing was non-compliant with their contract (in a strictly legalistic sense.) But NASA did have to approve the Boeing plan to test Starliner. I think it’s likely Boeing “magnanimously” decided to do a reflight, because the odds of NASA approving a plan without one were very, very low. Being told, “No, that won’t do. Go back and come up with a better plan.” wouldn’t be in Boeing’s interests.

  6. Jack says:
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    I think their statement should have been “…at no additional cost to the taxpayer…”

  7. hkolb says:
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    I need a reminder how much money did Boeing get VS SpaceX?

  8. sunman42 says:
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    Did they jump or were they pushed?

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Hard to tell with this one. But it was up to Boeing to propose to NASA how they were going to validate that Starliner was safe for astronauts to use to fly to the ISS and back. Could be that Boeing ended up jumping because they knew NASA would push them if they didn’t jump first.

  9. Bad Horse says:
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    Two things are for sure,

    1. A few NASA people will not be getting the normal 200K/yr – part time – work from home – consultation contract after they retire from the Gov.

    2. Someone in NASA (with balls) sees the danger in the Boeing software product.

    No. 2 gives me hope for the crews that will one day fly in the spacecraft.

    Please NASA, will take a hard look at NASA IV&V and S&MA and find out why they approved the flight software. It would be a great way to secure crew safety on CTS-100

  10. Vladislaw says:
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    The beauty of fixed price contracts over the cost plus model.

  11. Aero313 says:
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    This reminds me of the old joke about the worker who submits an expense report for travel, only to have an expense disallowed. He resubmits the expense report with the comment “now find it.”

    This “corporate investment” goes into indirect rates and gets covered on the cost-plus contracts like KC-46 and GBI. Plus, Boeing is about to get a $19 BILLION gov’t bailout. Any chance the reflight costs are covered there?