Another Delay: Boeing Starliner's Schedule to Send Crews to Orbit, Delayed to 2018

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has expected next year to be the year when its dependence upon Russia to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station will finally end. However, one of the two companies is now slated to provide that service. Boeing has said that it will not be able to launch a crewed mission of the Starliner spacecraft until 2018.

According to geekwire.com, a top Boeing executive said that the company plans to begin sending crews into orbit aboard CST-100 Starliner space taxi in 2018. This represents a slight delay in NASA's projected schedule. "We're working toward our first unmanned flight in 2017, followed by a manned astronaut flight in 2018," Leanne Caret, who is Boeing's executive vice president as well as president and chief executive officer of Boeing's defense, space and security division, said at a briefing for investors.

After having extreme competition with other providers, Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion in 2014 to finalize the development of the Starliner capsule, and SpaceX received $2.6 billion to finish developing its Dragon capsule. A spokeperson for SpaceX told Ars that the company is on track for crewed mission in 2017.

NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to send its astronauts to the space station since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011. The space agency's administrator, Charles Bolden has criticized Congress for consistently not giving enough funds to its commercial crew program since the shuttle stopped its flights. This has already caused the launch of Boeing and SpaceX vehicles to be delayed from 2015 to 2017.

The Russians have been trustworthy partners to NASA in the space station program; however they have steadily raised the price of a seat from less than $50 million a few years ago, to more than $81.7 million in the next few years. as a hedge against possibility of delays, NASA has signed a $490 million with Russia last year which reserved six more seats for their crews in 2018 and early 2019.