I'm John Bachelor. Hotel Mars, Episode N, David Livingston, Dr. Space of the Space Show joins as my colleague and co-pilot,

and we're seeking space engineering and the saga of the Boeing Starliner.

I read from a headline in these last hours. Bloomberg, Boeing sticks with Starliner after brutal NASA report, subhead.

The company says it's fixing the spacecraft that left two astronauts marooned in orbit.

Explanation.

After two botched test flights, writes Bloomberg, numerous investigations and plenty of embarrassing

findings about the company's engineering abilities. Boeing maintains its Starliner

capsule has a future. Doug, a very good evening to you. Doug Messier keeps a substack page.

I highly recommend. He writes frequently about space matters when it comes to spending too much money and getting very little in return. Let's get to the fundamentals, Doug. What was Starliner conceived to be? Why did this exist at all? Good evening to you.

Okay, good evening.

Starliner was a project of the commercial crew program of NASA.

It was designed to take astronauts up to the space station and back.

It was kind of a backup to the SpaceX crew dragon. NASA wanted to have two crew options.

And so far, it really hasn't achieved that.

NASA spent about $4.2 billion,

gave that to Boeing to develop this vehicle.

They've actually had three flight tests

that have been deeply troubled. They spent about $4.2 million on it, or billion on it.

And Boeing has absorbed about $2 billion in losses due to delays and botched test flights.

What happened in this case was on June 5th, 24.

They had the third flight test of this.

They had Sonny Williams, which Wilmore flew up to the station.

...