Chronic delays and billions in overruns have set back the company’s space programs while nimbler rivals pose a longer-term threat. F or embattled Boeing, one thing that went right last year was NASA’s Artemis I mission. The aerospace giant’s Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket yet to fly, propelled a mannequin-filled crew vehicle to the moon and back in a dry run for a return of Americans to the lunar surface. Sure, the Space Launch System was four years behind schedule and came in at a 30% higher cost than the $9 billion initially budgeted to develop it. But Jim Chilton claims it as a win for Boeing’s space division, which he’s headed since 2016. “Last year we tasted a lot of success,” he told Forbes . His highlights include an unmanned test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which docked at the International Space Station as Boeing seeks to prove it can fulfill a NASA contract to ferry astronauts and cargo back and forth to the outpost, and the launch of the first two of a new class of software-defined commercial communications satellites that Boeing developed. But like the Space Launch System, Chilton’s successes come with asterisks: they […]
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