Boeing Starliner & SLS rocket to the Moon are Complete Disaster! SpaceX to Replace...

Once the world's number one aerospace company, a symbol of American pride, the name that helped send humans to the moon during the legendary Apollo era. But today, Boeing is facing a very different reputation. It's not just facing criticism over massive SLS delays and cost overruns. Now the spotlight has shifted to serious issues surrounding Starliner, a spacecraft so troubled that NASA classified the incident as a Category A, mishap the same level associated with disasters like Challenger and Columbia. So how did Boeing decline so dramatically? Will they be forced to pay for the damage to NASA's contracts? Let's break it all down in today's episode of Alpha Tech. Most of us still remember Boeing Starliner crew flight test back in June, 2024. The first crewed mission that was supposed to be a quick eight to 14 day milestone. The launch went perfectly. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams reached orbit safely. But as Starliner approached the ISS, thrusters started failing, helium leaks popped up in multiple manifolds, and the spacecraft even lost stable control temporarily. Docking happened thanks to quick troubleshooting from the crew and ground teams. But NASA deemed it too risky for return. What was meant to be a short trip turned into a 93 day stay on the ISS. Starliner came home uncrewed in September, 2024, while the astronauts waited until March, 2025 to return on SpaceX's Crew Dragon. The anomalies were serious enough that NASA couldn't brush it off as minor. Thankfully, no lives were lost, but the risks were real. That's why in February, 2025, under new leadership, NASA set up an independent program investigation team, the PIT, to dig deep into what really went wrong. This team was not limited to analyzing hardware failures like thruster anomalies or helium leaks. Their mandate went further. They were asked to examine organizational breakdowns, leadership decisions, safety culture, and communication gaps, the systemic conditions that allowed risk to build up in the first place. The PIT worked for nearly a year. The investigation wrapped up in November, 2025. What followed was internal review redactions and preparation for public release. Then on February 19th, 2026, NASA officially published the final report, 311 pages long, partially redacted and retroactively classified, the incident as a Type A mishap. That designation matters. Type A is NASA's highest level of severity. It's typically reserved for incidents involving loss of spacecraft control, property damage, exceeding $2 million, or a credible risk to human life. The same category is associated with Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. This time, there were no fatalities. But by NASA's own definition, the mission came far closer to disaster than many of us first realized. The reasons become clear once you look at the impact. The number alone is enough to make any program manager uneasy. To resolve the situation, NASA had to give up two seats on a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to bring Butch and Suni home. That meant two other astronauts had to be reassigned and pushed back, throwing off the entire crew rotation schedule aboard the International Space Station. Experts estimate the cost of those changes could climb to nearly $200 million. That's about 100 times the minimum threshold required for a Type A mishap. And then there's the technical side, the part that really matters. At a highly sensitive phase of the mission, the spacecraft temporarily lost control of its attitude and trajectory. More specifically, the flight control system recorded a loss of full six degree of freedom authority. Starliner completely lost its ability to translate along the X-axis, meaning it could not properly thrust forward. The immediate cause was a cascade failure of multiple RCS thrusters located in the protective propulsion pods, often called the dog houses. When two aft thrusters in the lower pod and two corresponding thrusters in the right side pod went offline at the same time, the vehicle became thrust imbalanced. From that point on, any attempt to push forward would not produce clean linear motion. Instead, the spacecraft would yaw or pitch off axis because the remaining thrusters were no longer producing symmetrical force. In close proximity operations near the ISS, that is an extremely dangerous situation. So why did these thrusters effectively go on strike? Investigators identified two systemic hardware issues. The first involved two-phase flow in the oxidizer feed system. The RCS pods experienced significant thermal soak-back heat, radiating from the thrusters themselves and from the larger OMAC engines nearby. High temperature combined with low pressure caused the oxidizer nitrogen tetroxide to boil inside the propellant lines. Vapor pockets formed in the plumbing. Thrusters are designed to receive liquid oxidizer. Instead, they were ingesting gas bubbles. Performance dropped dramatically in some cases down to 11% thrust and at times to zero. The second hardware issue sounds simple, but it was just as serious. It involved the Teflon seals inside the poppet valves. The report describes this as poppet extrusion. Prolonged exposure to oxidizer and elevated temperatures caused the Teflon sealing material to deform and swell. The seal material intruded into the flow path and partially blocked propellant from reaching the combustion chamber. The combination of vaporized oxidizer and obstructed valves triggered the fault detection system For safety, the software automatically shut down the affected thrusters. That protective action, however, is what ultimately led to the loss of control authority we saw during rendezvous. And the problems did not end there. After undocking from the ISS and preparing for return, another hardware issue emerged inside the crew module. Investigators detected carbamic acid formed by a chemical reaction between leaked nitrogen tetroxide and carbon dioxide. The acid corroded stainless steel components, jammed valves, and disabled one of the descent control thrusters. That left the spacecraft in a zero-fault-tolerant condition during reentry, one of the most unforgiving phases of any mission. Taken together, this was not a single anomaly. It was a chain reaction of material degradation and thermal management failures, risks that were not fully anticipated in Boeing's original design. And that was just the technical side of the story, because the Starliner incident was not simply a hardware failure. As NASA Administrator Jared Ezakman openly acknowledged, this was also the result of a management mindset shaped by schedule pressure and technical compromise. NASA was determined to secure a second crew transportation provider alongside SpaceX. Strategic redundancy mattered. Independence in sending astronauts to the ISS mattered. But that urgency came at a cost. According to the 311-page report, warning signs from earlier Boeing test flights were not treated with the level of caution many engineers believed they deserved. Concerns were debated, analyzed, and ultimately cleared for flight. The report goes further. It describes what investigators called a cultural breakdown and insufficient oversight. In several cases, NASA leadership accepted Boeing's operational rationale rather than strictly enforcing long-standing safety standards. Interviews with anonymous NASA personnel paint an even more troubling picture. Technical meetings, especially those focused on how to safely bring the crew home, were described as defensive, unhealthy, and contentious. One employee put it bluntly there was yelling in meetings. It was emotionally charged and unproductive. Take the helium leak debate as an example. There were strong dissenting views regarding the condition and sizing of the O-ring seals. Boeing maintained that the system remained within acceptable limits and presented scenarios that supported continued flight. Others pushed back hard. They argued that the O-ring dimensions fell outside standard engineering guidance, specifically the criteria outlined in the Parker O-ring handbook, often considered the Bible for mechanical sealing design. And perhaps most alarming of all, it was only after the spacecraft was already in orbit that teams fully realized something critical. Starliner was not truly fault-tolerant in the way it had been represented during its original certification reviews. In certain failure scenarios, there was no meaningful redundancy. That revelation raises a difficult question. How does a vulnerability of that magnitude pass through multiple design reviews, safety panels, and high-level oversight boards across two major organizations and still make it all the way to a crewed flight? That part is incredibly complex, and to this day, it has never been fully untangled in public. But there is one very visible fact that is hard to ignore. Despite everything, Boeing secured a $4.2 billion fixed-price contract from NASA for Starliner. That's about 1 1⁄2 times the $2.6 billion awarded to SpaceX for Crew Dragon. SpaceX did not receive special subsidies. They won the contract because they were cheaper, faster, and ultimately safer. They transported astronauts to the ISS, without major incident, completed every crewed mission successfully, and saved U.S. taxpayers billions in the process. Let that sink in. And Boeing, after years of delays, their first crewed test flight turned into an unplanned nine-month stay in orbit for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams instead of the planned eight days. NASA ultimately had to rely on SpaceX to bring them home. Now, Starliner is classified in the same mishap category as Challenger and Columbia. Yet Boeing's contract value remains higher. It raises an uncomfortable question. Is this how the system rewards delay risk and cost overruns? And Starliner is not the only example. Boeing is also the prime contractor responsible for designing, manufacturing, and assembling the core stage of the Space Launch System. That program has faced its own series of technical and management challenges, including repeated hydrogen leaks during wet dress rehearsals. Those leaks led to multiple scrubs and delays impacting several Artemis missions. What makes the situation even more controversial is this. Boeing has not had to reimburse NASA for these issues, even when the root cause traced back to their hardware. In some cases, the structure of the contract actually allowed Boeing to receive additional compensation tied to extended work and delays. The reason comes down to contract type. For Starliner, this is a fixed price contract. Boeing was originally awarded about $4.2 billion, later reduced to roughly $3.7 billion after the mission count was cut from six to four. Under fixed price, Boeing is responsible for cost overruns. And to be clear, they have absorbed more than $2 billion in losses on the program since 2016. There are no automatic penalties just for delays. However, if Boeing were to terminate the program early or fail to complete the remaining missions, the contract includes penalty clauses. NASA could leverage those provisions if Boeing does not fulfill its obligations. SLS is a different story. Boeing is responsible for developing and producing the core stage and the exploration upper stage for the Block 1B configuration. That contract is structured as cost plus. In simple terms, NASA reimburses Boeing for all allowable and reasonable costs, including overruns, and then pays an additional award fee based on performance evaluations. So even as the program experiences delays and ballooning costs, Boeing is not directly penalized in the same way it would be under a fixed price structure. There is no large repayment triggered simply because the schedule slips. NASA's Office of Inspector General has repeatedly criticized this arrangement. But NASA has rejected most proposals for direct financial penalties, arguing that imposing sanctions outside the agreed contract terms would be beyond the bounds of the contract. Instead, NASA relies on award fee provisions. They can reduce or adjust performance fees to create indirect financial consequences. Whether that approach will change under Administrator Jared Isaacman remains to be seen.