Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft as it approaches the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6. Credit: NASA
In the month of October, THE Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing may abandon its space activities to focus on commercial aircraft and defense systems. That may be due in part to this summer’s test flight of the Starliner crew transport to the International Space Station (ISS), which negatively reshaped public opinion about the beleaguered aerospace titan.
But despite some of its bad publicity, Boeing’s six decades in space helped facilitate a permanent U.S. presence off-planet and enabled our first steps on the Moon.
Face challenges
Even before the Starliner test flight attracted limited press from Boeing this year, the capsule’s evolution had proved troubled. In 2014, the company won a $4.2 billion NASA contract to build the ISS crew capsule. A failed, uncrewed test flight in 2019 failed to reach the space station, and despite success in 2022, problems continued to mount. This included propulsion system failures, flammability issues with the duct tape, and parachute safety concerns.
It piled unwanted pressure on Boeing, which was already weathering negative publicity after fatal crashes of its 737 Max plane in 2018 and 2019. The door blowout of another Max in 2024 forced an emergency landing. And a seven-week strike by machinists ended this month after halting production of Boeing’s 737, 777 and 767 jets.
Against this grim backdrop, Starliner launched its first astronauts – NASA’s Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Suni Williams – in June for a scheduled eight-day stay on the ISS. But helium leaks and failures of the reaction control system have repeatedly lengthened their mission. Days became weeks and weeks became months. NASA decided to return the empty Starliner to Earth in September and keep Wilmore and Williams in orbit until February.
Boeing is tasked with six more Starliner crew rotation flights before the ISS retires and is deorbited after 2030. But as engineers dig into what went wrong and delays continue to mount, the future of the program remains precariously in the balance.
This is a hard blow for a company whose name is synonymous with aviation and whose machines have soared the skies of the world and beyond for decades.
Historic aviation
In 1961, NASA chose Boeing to build the S-IC first stage of the Saturn V. This behemoth was until 2022 the largest and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status. Flying 13 times between 1967 and 1973, it sent 24 men to the Moon and put the largest object into Earth orbit: America’s first space station, Skylab.
42 meters (138 feet) tall, the S-IC contained 731,000 liters (193,000 gallons) of kerosene and 100,000 liters (265,000 gallons) of liquid oxygen. Its five F-1 engines produced 7.7 million pounds (3.5 million kilograms) of thrust. The S-IC burned for the first 168 seconds of each launch, lifting the behemoth to an altitude of 45 miles (72 kilometers) and a speed of 5,100 miles per hour (8,200 kilometers per hour) before the Saturn V’s upper stages would take over.
For the astronauts, riding the S-IC was an otherworldly experience: “Like the distant thunder of a storm beyond the horizon,” wrote Frank Borman of Apollo 8. “A guttural roar that was felt, rather than audible.” , said Tom Stafford of Apollo 10, while Fred Haise of Apollo 13 recalled the “pronounced jerky, left-to-right motion” induced by the F-1 engines.
But Boeing’s involvement with Apollo ran deeper. He built five uncrewed Lunar Orbiters, which from 1966 to 1968 mapped 99% of the Moon at resolutions below 200 feet (60 meters), crucially aiding NASA’s selection of Apollo landing sites.
The company also built the four-wheeled lunar rover, called the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), which was used during the last three Apollo missions between 1971 and 1972. Described by Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott as “a brilliant piece of engineering,” the battery-powered rover reached a top speed of 10 mph (16 km/h) on the moon’s hilly surface, covering a maximum distance of 22 miles (35 km) and reaching almost 5 miles (8 km) from the lunar module.
In the solar system
Three decades later, when NASA refocused on the Moon, Boeing was chosen to make the second stage of the Ares I crew launch vehicle, a rocket later canceled in 2010. But in 2011, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket was born, with Boeing chosen to build its 65 meter high main stage. Powered by four RS-25 engines, inherited from the shuttle, it generated almost a quarter of the 4 million kg of thrust needed to lift the SLS off the ground, the rest coming from two solid-fuel boosters.
Related: By the numbers: the Space Launch System, NASA’s next moon rocket
After a problem-plagued evolution, the SLS first flew to great fanfare in 2022, carrying an uncrewed Orion capsule on the Artemis I mission to the Moon. It will next fly NASA astronauts around the Moon on Artemis II in 2025, before powering the first crewed lunar landing mission in more than half a century on Artemis III in 2026.
Related: By the numbers: the Space Launch System, NASA’s next moon rocket
Boeing is also building the upper stages needed for the SLS to carry astronauts beyond Earth orbit. Its Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) worked flawlessly on Artemis I, with additional use planned on Artemis II and III. And the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) in development will support crewed Artemis IV missions after 2028.
The EUS, which completed its critical design review in 2020, enables the SLS to lift not only crew-carrying Orion ships but also large hardware components to build the Gateway space station in lunar orbit.
Closer to home, Boeing’s Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) flew 24 times on shuttles and Titan IV rockets from 1982 to 2004. Despite its failure to deliver NASA’s first tracking and data relay satellite into orbit, it IUS subsequently sent the Magellan probe to Venus, Galileo to Jupiter, Ulysses to the poles of the Sun, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory on its 25-year mission to study the planet X-ray Universe.
Since 2006, Boeing has also enjoyed a 50-50 partnership with Lockheed Martin in the United Launch Alliance (ULA), whose Delta II, Atlas V, Delta IV and Vulcan rockets have logged 170 missions.
Notably, Boeing’s Delta IV flew 45 times from 2002 to 2024, mostly for national security missions but also for NASA’s first Orion test flight in 2014 and to launch the Parker Solar Probe in 2018. Its Delta configuration IV Heavy, with three common booster cores, was the world’s most powerful rocket from 2004 to 2018.
Planetary exploration also falls within Boeing’s mandate. He built Mariner 10, which in 1974 and 1975 was the first probe to exploit the gravity of one world (Venus) to reach another (Mercury). The probe has completed three flybys of Mercury, revealing for the first time the mysterious face of the Sun’s innermost planet.
Boeing also designed Dyna-Soar, a Cold War-era program to build a hypersonic research vehicle and military glider for reconnaissance and electronic surveillance of Soviet Russia. Capable of suborbital and orbital missions, this single-seat spaceplane was canceled in 1963, but its legacy remained visible in the subsequent space shuttle design.
More recently, Boeing developed prototypes for the X-38 mini-shuttle to bring astronauts back from the ISS in case of emergency. That program was canceled in 2002 due to budget cuts.
And since 2010, the Boeing-built X-37B uncrewed mini-shuttle has flown six times for military and technology research in Earth orbit, with mission durations gradually lengthened from 224 days to 908 days. The X-37B can change its altitude and orbital inclination, and became the first U.S. autonomous orbital vehicle to return to a landing strip. A seventh X-37B mission is currently underway, launching last December.
But those impressive flight times pale in comparison to what is arguably Boeing’s flagship, a spaceship that has been in orbit for more than 25 years: the ISS itself. Selected as the space station’s prime contractor in 1995, Boeing built the Unity node, Destiny laboratory, Quest airlock, truss structure and solar panels. To date, the ISS has facilitated more than 2,500 experiments by nearly 300 men and women from 22 nations.
Last frontier
With such an impressive and enduring portfolio – from spaceplanes to space stations, rockets to satellites – it remains to be seen what Boeing’s next steps might be. But if the company gave up some or all of its space activities, it would bring the curtain down on more than six decades of contributions to U.S. exploration beyond Earth.
