Boeing employees are not happy.
NASA has decided Elon Musk’s SpaceX offers a safer route to bring back to Earth two astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station for months, according to the New York Post.
On Saturday, NASA announced that instead of returning to Earth on the Starliner capsule that brought them to the ISS, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will park in space until next year, according to the Associated Press.
Wilmore and Williams arrived on the space station in June on what was supposed to be an eight-day mission. However, technical issues that marred their flight led to them remaining on board with no timetable to return.
NASA announced that they will return in February because no sooner flight from the space station to Earth could accommodate two more people.
The empty Starliner capsule will land by autopilot in September.
All that has left Boeing employees are “humiliated,” a Florida-based Boeing worker said, according to the Post, which did not use the employee’s name.
The worker said the humiliation adds to the problems that have piled up ever since part of a Boeing airliner blew off in mid-flight during January, triggering a closer inspection of what goes on at Boeing that has revealed multiple production flaws.
“We have had so many embarrassments lately, we’re under a microscope. This just made it, like, 100 times worse,” the worker said. “We hate SpaceX. We talk s*** about them all the time, and now they’re bailing us out.”
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“It’s shameful. I’m embarrassed. I’m horrified,” the worker said.
Morale is “in the toilet,” the worker said, as Boeing blames NASA for the slap in the face.
“We believed that Starliner could bring them home safely, but NASA didn’t want to chance it,” the employee said.
“They have their own PR issues and don’t need two dead astronauts. But we didn’t think that there would be dead astronauts. We’d never have recommended that they use us if they thought that it was going to be unsafe for them,” the worker said.
Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said talks between NASA and Boeing “came down to a little disagreement about risk.”
Boeing has racked up about $1.5 billion in cost overruns on the $4.5 billion contract to develop the Starliner.
That means the project could face a harsh decision about its future, according to Bloomberg, which noted new Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg could decide the venture should be ended.
“Do they ultimately exit the program because it’s too complicated and because the other guy can do it better? It can happen,” said Robert Spingarn, an analyst with Melius Research.
