NASA just decided that SpaceX needs to rescue Boeing’s astronauts. Written before the Starliner debacle, Berger’s forthcoming book Reentry tells the backstory with plenty of foreshadowing, starting with Boeing’s attempt to be the sole crewed spacecraft provider: “Boeing had a solution, telling NASA it needed the entire Commercial Crew budget to succeed. Because a lot of decision makers believed that only Boeing could safely fly astronauts, the company’s gambit very nearly worked.” (p.270) After “a cascade of pro-Boeing opinions swept around the table, a building and unbreakable wave of consensus” (272), NASA’s human exploration lead Gerstenmeier took a month to decide, eventually asking for more budget to support two competing efforts. Ultimately, Boeing would receive twice as much funding as SpaceX, but SpaceX was in the game, as the new kid on the block. “It had been a very near thing. NASA officials had already written a justification for selecting Boeing, solely for the Commercial Crew contract. It was ready to go and had to be hastily rewritten to include SpaceX. This delayed the announcement to September 16.” (274) “Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman helped write the proposal and provide and astronaut’s perspective. But their small team was no match for Boeing’s proposal-writing machine. It was intimidating knowing that 200 people were working on Boeing’s proposal, when Dragon’s team could fit in a small conference room.” (275) With Reisman in photo 2 above from 2012, after pulling an all-nighter at SpaceX: flic.kr/p/c5sY3N “BOEING HAS AN ASTRONAUT PROBLEM” (291) “When the SpaceX engineers could be corralled, they were eager to hear feedback from the NASA astronauts , excited to work with them, and attentive to their suggestions. By contrast, Boeing engineers seemed indifferent to hearing from the four commercial crew astronauts.” (293) “There was an arrogance with them that you certainly didn’t see at SpaceX.” (astronaut Hurley, p.294) “Boeing also underperformed. Not only were its engineers overconfident, but the company’s management also was not putting skin in the game. Hurley did not see any urgency from Boeing’s teams. Rather, they appeared to be working part-time on Starliner. ‘It was all about managing dollars and cents from Boeing’s perspective,’ Hurley said.” (295) “During the summer of 2018 as Boeing worked toward a pad abort test in White Sands, New Mexico (Boeing never flew an in-flight abort test)… a significant problem occurred due to a propellant leak. Ultimately, this would delay the company’s pad abort test by more than a year, but at the time, Boeing neglected to tell the Commercial Crew astronauts about the issue.” (295) “That summer NASA was closing in on making crew assignments for the first flights. Hurley told the chief of the astronaut office he would not fly on Starliner.” (296) He went on to fly the first SpaceX Dragon to bring crew to the ISS (we were there for the launch, photo 3). “‘It was the second space age,’ Hurley said. ‘And it started in 2020.’” (313) My video from Mission Control captured the excitement of capture: youtube.com/watch?v=bwqdEKLi… “SpaceX emerged triumphant over another major domestic competitor, Boeing, as well. The company that supposedly went for substance over pizzazz, ended up with neither in the Commercial Crew race.” (340) Just prior to their first human flight, there were several “shocking discoveries, especially so close to the flight. Neither NASA nor Boeing had good answers for why they had been found as astronauts were about to strap into Starliner. Questions emerged about the company’s commitment to the program. Because it operates on a fixed-price contract [and despite being 2x higher than SpaceX’s], Boeing has reported losses of nearly $1 billion on Starliner.” (342) After being stranded in space, Suni will fly with SpaceX, as she originally hoped (photo 1 above). And during this same time, there was a Boeing – Lockheed joint venture competing for launch, ULA: “The U.S. rocket wars were over. SpaceX had won. Since then, SpaceX has kept beating the dead horse. Over one stretch, from the end of 2022 into the first half of 2023, SpaceX launched more than fifty rockets between ULA flights. It has become difficult to remember that these two companies were once rivals, or that ULA’s employees would drive up to the SpaceX fence, jeering.” (339) Reentry book pre-order: amazon.com/Reentry-SpaceX-Re… cc @ElonMusk