Guests: John Batchelor, Eric Berger, Dr. David Livingston.  Topics:  Boeing and the challenges ahead to fly and maintain Starliner.

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John Batchelor and I welcomed back Eric Berger of Ars Technica to discuss the ongoing problems and delays for the Boeing Starliner capsule designed to take four crew to the ISS.  Be sure to read Eric's Ars Technical article, "To Keep Starliner flying, Boing must make some hard choices" at https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/to-keep-starliner-flying-boeing-must-make-some-hard-choices.  John, Eric and I discussed the Starliner challenges plus toward the end of our discussion Eric put forth three possible options or paths for Boeing to take vis a vis Starliner.  To start off, Eric provided us with a short history of Boeing and the CST 100 (Starliner) going back to the beginning of 2004.  He talked about how Boeing had not made the investment originally planned plus other issues that have plagued Boeing from the start including quality control, funding, management issues, and just plain incompetence. John asked about the parachute strap problem which Eric explained in detail plus we talked about the flammable tape that was a big deal to remove from Starliner.  I did ask Eric about the role of incompetence; the lack of quality control and its management issues so don't miss how Eric responded to each of those concerns.  We talked about the Boeing competition which for now has been and still is SpaceX.  The ULA delays waiting on Blue Origin for the BE 4 engine to power the new ULA rocket Vulcan came up but Eric did not think the engine delays were a big part of Starliner's problems.  He pointed out that ULA was moving forward with Vulcan.  Eric brough up the concern that other than 6 demo launch confirmations, Starliner has no launch confirmations for the future and certainly there is no human certified launch for the near term and maybe longer other than with SpaceX.  John and I asked additional questions and Eric had more to say so do listen to this discussion and be sure to read Eric's article.

Please post your comments/questions regarding this program and for Eric on our blog for this show.  You can reach Eric Berger through his Ars Technica site.