NASA has labelled the botched 2024 Starliner mission, which left two astronauts stranded in space for months, a “Type A” mishap, on par with fatal shuttle disasters of the past, in a newly published report.
The category is the space agency’s most severe, reserved for incidents causing more than $2m (£1.49 m) in damage, the loss of a vehicle or its control, or deaths.
On Thursday, Nasa’s new boss, Jared Isaacman, blasted Boeing, which built Starliner, and the space agency for poor decision-making and leadership that led to the failed mission.
“Why don’t we just let private companies develop spacecraft instead of wasting money on NASA?”
This. This is why.
I’m not sure you understand who makes spacecraft that NASA uses in the past or present. There are not “NASA [built]” spacecraft.
- Orion is built by a private company Lockheed Martin
- The Space Shuttle was built by a private company, Rockwell International, which is now Boeing
- Apollo command module was built by a private company North American Aviation (which was acquired by Rockwell, which is now Boeing)
- The Lunar Lander was built by a private company Grumman Aerospace Corporation, which today is part of Northrop Grumman.
The difference between what you’re calling “private company spacecraft” and “NASA [built]” is just contract terms used on how to pay for it.
You’re also leaving out how (fuck Musk) SpaceX Dragon is also a private company spacecraft and has been wildly successful and saving billions of dollars of tax payer money over running the Space Shuttle in its place.
All valid points, and yes SpaceX is a demonstration of how privatization can be more innovative. The challenge is that the counterpoint of Boeing culture change causing things like the Starliner is about as valid when regulatory capture happens.
I’m not saying nationalizing companies would help, but a government with good oversight (which is more and more of a question under Trump) could also help.
The challenge is that the counterpoint of Boeing culture change causing things like the Starliner is about as valid when regulatory capture happens.
We’ll its not “regulatory capture” because we’re not talking about regulatory agencies, but you’re right if you’re talking corporate capture.
I know its going to sound counter-intuitive, but Starliner was actually necessary to break corporate capture.
The entrenched interests in Aerospace as well as Congress had almost no desire to change. Aerospace loved their “cost plus” infinite money printing machines paid for by government dollars. Contractors had zero concern for cost overruns/ballooning costs. Congress got to land Aerospace jobs in their districts. NASA got working but VERY EXPENSIVE space vehicles every 10-20 years. Fat cats on all sides were very very happy with this arrangement.
A very small set of politicians concerned about costs (and likely some campaign contributions) along with NASA wanted much cheaper vehicles then they were getting at that time. So they got a proposal to have private companies bid for fixed price contracts for space cargo flights. “UPS for space shipments” essentially. It worked. Law passed It was cheap. It was reliable.
So then with the success of private cargo, questions were raise why we were spending orders of magnitude more on human flights to the International Space Station? There was much clutching of pearls about these new hotshot private space companies and if they could handle human spaceflight. Somehow Boeing, the trusted legacy maker of the Space Shuttle and Apollo, was convinced to bid on human private spaceflight. There was now a company Congress would be confident would deliver a working solution, and they still got to tell their districts they were bringing
porkjobs. Those other untrustworthy “newspace” companies could fail, and Boeing would still deliver human spaceflight as they had for decades.We know now how wrong that was, but without that as a possible future, no human private spaceflight would have happened. If it had just been newspace companies like SpaceX and Sierra Space, Congress never would have passed the legislation to allow Commercial Crew to happen.
So you can see that Starliner needed to exist to break the corporate capture. That had to existed for use to break the corporate capture model that plagued human spaceflight.
I’m not saying nationalizing companies would help, but a government with good oversight (which is more and more of a question under Trump) could also help.
I don’t have much faith in that idea. Look at what NASA was before private spaceflight. I love them for other reasons, but look at what ESA (European Space Agency) is today. Safran is a company that is the Boeing to ESA with all the same problems of Boeing for NASA.
I think we’re aligned on the core issue but with nuanced perspectives. Regulatory capture is indeed the established academic term for the phenomenon you describe, precisely capturing how agencies meant to protect public interest end up advancing industry priorities through mechanisms like the revolving doorbetween Boeing and Congress.
Where I’d argue the Starliner narrative: While Boeing’s participation provided political cover for Commercial Crew legislation, SpaceX’s 2010 Falcon 9 debut and subsequent rapid repeatability fundamentally reset industry expectations. The success of fixed-price cargo contracts demonstrated reusable rockets and rapid iteration were possible, proving cost-plus models weren’t inevitable. This technological inflection point–not Boeing’s involvement–created the political space for NASA to demand accountability in human spaceflight.
Boeing’s Starliner struggles directly stem from its post-1997 merger culture shift, where McDonnell Douglas’ profit-focused management supplanted engineering excellence. This same culture produced both the 737 MAX flaws and Starliner’s valve failures, showing how regulatory capture enabled systemic safety failures when oversight bodies delegated excessive authority to Boeing.
The breakthrough came not from Boeing’s inclusion but from SpaceX proving fixed-price development could work, breaking the cost-plus mentality that had entrenched inefficiency for decades. Had Commercial Crew relied solely on legacy contractors, the same capture cycle would likely have persisted. SpaceX’s existence changed the incentive structure, not Boeing’s participation
