Boeing’s third launch attempt nears for embattled Starliner spacecraft

On Thursday, aerospace company Boeing is set to conduct a critical test flight of its new passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner — a mission that will launch the gumdrop-shaped capsule to the International Space Station without any people on board. It’s a flight that Boeing desperately needs to go well after a long journey to the launchpad that’s been marked by numerous failures, false starts, and lengthy delays.

Starliner is, in essence, a space taxi. Designed to carry up to seven passengers, the capsule is meant to launch to orbit on top of an Atlas V rocket, automatically dock with the International Space Station, or ISS, and then eventually land back on Earth again under a suite of parachutes. Once it’s deemed operational, Starliner will primarily transport NASA astronauts to and from the station to help keep the ISS continuously staffed. But before NASA feels comfortable putting people on board, the agency wants Starliner to prove it can safely perform all the major milestones of a human spaceflight mission.

Proving that has turned out to be a struggle for Boeing over the last three years. In fact, this upcoming Starliner launch is a do-over of a do-over. Boeing first attempted to launch an uncrewed Starliner in 2019, but the spacecraft never made it to the space station as intended. At NASA’s behest, the company agreed to give the test flight another shot, with a redo launch planned to take place in the summer of last year. But after rolling out Starliner to the launchpad, Boeing wound up taking the spacecraft back to the factory to fix some valves that weren’t behaving properly. It’s been nearly a year since that rollback took place, and the cumulative delays have cost Boeing an extra $595 million.

Now, Boeing is poised to try again, and the company is hoping that the third time will be the charm. “The Boeing team is prepared and ready,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s program manager for the Commercial Crew Program, said during a press conference ahead of the flight. “The NASA-Boeing partnership is really strong, and it’s a reflection of all the hard work that’s been done.”

The reality is Boeing’s ties to NASA have slowly eroded during Starliner’s development, and failing at this flight test could put that partnership in further jeopardy. Plus, if Boeing doesn’t succeed, NASA could be left with just one launch provider — SpaceX — to get humans to and from the ISS.

First try

Boeing’s been working on Starliner since 2014 when NASA selected the company, along with SpaceX, to develop space capsules that could carry astronauts to and from the space station. The two companies were the finalists in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which aimed to put private companies — not the government — in charge of transporting people to low Earth orbit. At the time, Boeing received an initial development contract worth $4.2 billion, while SpaceX received a contract worth $2.6 billion.

Those contract awards sparked a competition between SpaceX and Boeing to see which company could launch humans to the ISS first. Throughout the development process, both…