NASA's announcement Saturday that it won't use a troubled Boeing capsule to return two stranded astronauts to Earth is a yet another setback for the struggling company, although the financial damage is likely to be less than the reputational harm.
The space capsule program represents a tiny fraction of Boeing's revenue, but carrying astronauts is a high-profile job — like Boeing's work building Air Force One presidential jets. Since 2022, however, Boeing's defense and space division has stumbled too, losing $6 billion — slightly more than the airplane side of the company in the same period.
Boeing, with more than a century of building airplane and decades as a NASA contractor, was seen as the favorite. But Starliner suffered technical setbacks that caused it to cancel some test launches, fall behind schedule and go over budget. SpaceX won the race to ferry astronauts to the ISS, which it accomplished in 2020.
Aboulafia said Starliner's impact on Boeing business and finances will be modest — “not really a needle-mover.” Even the $4.2 billion, multi-year NASA contract is a relatively small chunk of revenue for Boeing, which reported sales of $78 billion last year. Boeing's defense division has recently won some huge contracts. It is lined up to provide Apache helicopters to foreign governments, sellto Israel as the bulk of a $20 billion deal, and build prototype surveillance planes for the Air Force under a $2.56 billion contract.