Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
If you ask anyone who knows even a little about the space industry what the biggest failure is, they’ll probably say Boeing’s Starliner. Boeing promised to deliver the best crew capsule ever made, took billions from NASA, and ended up delivering one of the most disappointing spacecraft in modern history. And the worst part? It’s still not getting any better. In this video, we’ll look into what went wrong and why things keep going downhill. But before we dive in, make sure to subscribe to our channel for more space updates.
The story starts back in 2014, when NASA gave Boeing a $4.2 billion contract to build the Starliner spacecraft.
At that time, NASA was in a difficult position. The Space Shuttle program had ended in 2011 after the Columbia disaster, and the U.S. no longer had any vehicle to send astronauts into orbit. For several years, NASA had to buy seats on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft just to reach the international space station. Each seat cost around $80 million, and as tensions grew between the U.S. and Russia, that arrangement became increasingly risky.
To fix this, NASA started the Commercial Crew Program.
When it came time to pick which companies to fund, NASA chose two: Boeing and SpaceX. SpaceX received $2.6 billion, and Boeing received $4.2 billion. Boeing got more money mainly because NASA trusted them more. Boeing had decades of experience building spacecrafts and rockets, including work on the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle, and the ISS modules. SpaceX, on the other hand, was still new and unproven. In 2014, they had only been flying Falcon 9 rockets for a few years.
If you ask anyone who knows even a little about the space industry what the biggest failure is, they’ll probably say Boeing’s Starliner. Boeing promised to deliver the best crew capsule ever made, took billions from NASA, and ended up delivering one of the most disappointing spacecraft in modern history. And the worst part? It’s still not getting any better. In this video, we’ll look into what went wrong and why things keep going downhill. But before we dive in, make sure to subscribe to our channel for more space updates.
The story starts back in 2014, when NASA gave Boeing a $4.2 billion contract to build the Starliner spacecraft.
At that time, NASA was in a difficult position. The Space Shuttle program had ended in 2011 after the Columbia disaster, and the U.S. no longer had any vehicle to send astronauts into orbit. For several years, NASA had to buy seats on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft just to reach the international space station. Each seat cost around $80 million, and as tensions grew between the U.S. and Russia, that arrangement became increasingly risky.
To fix this, NASA started the Commercial Crew Program.
When it came time to pick which companies to fund, NASA chose two: Boeing and SpaceX. SpaceX received $2.6 billion, and Boeing received $4.2 billion. Boeing got more money mainly because NASA trusted them more. Boeing had decades of experience building spacecrafts and rockets, including work on the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle, and the ISS modules. SpaceX, on the other hand, was still new and unproven. In 2014, they had only been flying Falcon 9 rockets for a few years.
