Stich said that while NASA is comfortable with the safety of Starliner, its two crew could always fly home on another spacecraft in the event further testing reveals something more negative.

Boeing’s vice president Mark Nappi bemoaned some of the media coverage of the test mission.

“Every morning I sit and I read them and I’ll tell you from being a representative Boeing and a representative of the Starliner program is pretty painful to read,” he said. “The things that are out there — we’ve gotten a really good test flight that’s been accomplished so far, and it’s been viewed rather negatively.”

He explained that the situation allowing for more time on the station from his perspective is a win-win, and he has no regrets flying the mission.

“We don’t understand these issues well enough to fix them permanently,” Nappi said. “The only way that we can do that is take the time in this unique environment and go and get more data, run more tests.”

Plans to certify Starliner will take longer than expected, so Starliner-1, the first operational flight, will have to possibly slip past the early plans as soon as February 2025, Stich said. That means SpaceX would have to move forward with a Crew-10 mission instead for early 2025, but that NASA had been preparing both crews already.

Boeing has six operational missions contracted as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program before the ISS is decommissioned after 2030, and Nappi said that despite the delays, Boeing is not changing its stance on the program.

“We’re not going to back out,” he said. “This is our job and this is what we’re going to continue to do to meet our commitments.”

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