NASA inspector general suggests Boeing's Starliner will now be a decade late

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman formally classified the 2024 crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft as a “Type A” mishap in February, acknowledging that the test flight was a serious failure. Two of NASA’s senior human spaceflight officials left their posts later that month. The inspector general reported that “ambiguity in NASA requirements and delays in the appropriate mishap classification hindered the resolution of CFT issues.” While agreeing with NASA’s decision to fly only cargo on the next Starliner mission, the inspector general wrote that a flight without astronauts would not satisfy all of the agency’s human-rating certification milestones. It also means NASA will have to buy an additional crew transportation mission to cover the services Starliner-1 would have originally provided. This will cost approximately $300 million. “This decision increases NASA’s costs to maintain a crewed ISS, along with compounding the ongoing delays with certifying the Starliner and reducing the number of contracted crew flights NASA has under (the Commercial Crew contract),” the inspector general wrote. There are other costs, too. NASA paid SpaceX $17 million to accelerate Crew Dragon flights to fill the gap left by the Starliner delays. …