Boeing was awarded more money for their vehicle, had years of extra time and two previous demonstration flights. This flight should have been close to flawless given the additional time Boeing had for remediation and testing. Boeing engineers should have understood their systems well enough to convincingly demonstrate the vehicle met NASA's safety requirements. Even after much additional testing during the flight they couldn't make their case. Starliner will probably complete its third uncrewed return intact and people might question if NASA was being overly cautious but perhaps Boeing should have supplied a crewed vehicle with reliable thrusters and avoided this embarrassment.
And don't forget that SpaceX had to sue the government/Boeing/Lockheed/ULA, multiple times, just in order to be allowed to compete for these contracts rather than having it locked down to the usual suspects.
Near flawless is an unreasonable expectation. SpaceX had the advantage of running years of cargo missions. The error was simply not using the same successful model with any new vehicle.
It is subjective language but for me "near flawless" is a reasonable expectation for a qualification flight. Not perfect because that is unreasonable. A leaking toilet would have been fine if Starliner had one. It isn't a critical system. An off-nominal thruster or two would also be acceptable. They have redundancy for a reason.
The helium leaks were not desirable but helium is difficult. Boeing engineers could demonstrate the rate of the leaks did not threaten the mission so it was manageable.
The thruster issues are completely different. Boeing couldn't present NASA with a convincing model of how the thrusters would perform. If they can't characterize such a fundamental part of the vehicle it is impossible to make an informed decisions which is a huge fail.
In hindsight a cargo first experience would have been valuable for commercial crew whether the winner was Sierra, NG or Boeing however that would have disqualified Sierra and Boeing. Boeing's involvement in commercial crew legitimized it politically. Boeing directly, via acquisition and through their suppliers including Aerojet have decades of experience in space flight far beyond SpaceX at the time. Boeing were not the underdogs.
What a weird argument. Boeing has the advantage of building things for space and NASA since the 60s - orbiters, rockets etc. They had a 40 year head start and some of the best engineers in the world. Near flawless compared to a 20 year old company I would say is a very reasonable expectation.
The process ship of theseus exchanges all components within a generation. It now even replaced its culture and is unable to ship. History of ability can not be interpolated to current disability .
