Boeing has lost more than $2 billion and counting on its Starliner spacecraft after a rough year in which the capsule’s first astronaut flight turned into a headache for NASA.
The Starliner program reported charges of $523 million for 2024 — its largest single-year loss to date — Boeing reported in a filing on Monday. The company noted that Starliner is under a fixed-price contract from NASA, so “there is ongoing risk that similar losses may have to be recognized in future periods.”
Since 2014, when NASA awarded Boeing with a nearly $5 billion fixed-price contract to develop Starliner, the company has recorded losses on the program almost every year.
Boeing’s program competes with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has flown 10 crew missions for NASA and counting on its Dragon capsules.
Last summer, Boeing’s first crew flight went awry after part of the capsule’s propulsion system malfunctioned. While Starliner delivered astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station, NASA made the decision to bring Starliner back empty and use SpaceX to return the crew early this year — an agency choice that recently became politicized.
Neither Boeing nor NASA have provided details on how or when they plan to resolve the Starliner propulsion issue.
Boeing last week confirmed that Starliner Vice President Mark Nappi was leaving his role, Reuters reported, with the company’s ISS program manager John Mulholland named as his replacement. Mullholland previously led the Starliner program from 2011 to 2020.
Nearly four months ago, NASA said it was keeping “windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025,” but scheduled SpaceX to fly both its crews on missions launching in spring and late summer. NASA then specified that “the timing and configuration of Starliner’s next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is established.”
The agency has not given an update on Starliner since making those comments in October.