So.

Fire sale

Troubled aerospace giant Boeing is reportedly looking to sell its space business following the disastrous crewed test launch of its much-maligned Starliner which left two NASA astronauts stranded in space.

Like the Wall Street Journal reportsinside sources say Boeing is seeking to withdraw from the space race altogether in the face of a deepening financial crisis – a surprising turnaround for a company that has worked on iconic space vehicles ranging from NASA’s space shuttle to the International Space Station.

The struggling entrepreneur even contacted Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, according to the WSJwho works on his own rockets for NASA.

Despite a decade of development, Boeing has yet to deliver and return astronauts aboard its Starliner capsule, a damning indictment of a company that already has several major fires to put out.

In other words, it should come as no surprise that Boeing is looking to cut its losses – but buyers beware.

Ballast so hard

Boeing was burn billions of dollars as its commercial aircraft business continues to struggle regarding quality control issues and a continuing strike by industrial workers of epic proportions. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Boeing is preparing to lay off ten percent of its workforce, which represents a staggering 17,000 employees.

And Starliner, its entry into NASA’s Commercial Crew program, fares no better. The capsule left the International Space Station last month without any passengers on board because of persistent technical problems that NASA considered too dangerous for a crew return.

According to its latest filings with regulators, the company has made another decision massive loss of $250 million on its Starliner commercial crew program during the third quarter of its fiscal year, bringing total losses related to the spacecraft’s development to a staggering $1.85 billion.

NASA too recently announced that an upcoming crew rotation flight to the ISS would use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon instead of the Starliner.

Despite seeking a buyer for Starliner, Boeing is reportedly still committed to overseeing the development of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which is expected to send the first astronauts to the surface of the Moon in more than half a century, at sooner in two years. .

Nevertheless, NASA’s inspector general concluded in a damning August report that Boeing’s contributions were woefully late and well over budget.

In short, Boeing’s recently named CEO Kelly Ortberg now has the seemingly impossible task of picking up the pieces and letting go of the parts of the business that are weighing down a company actively in crisis.

“We’re better off doing less and doing it better than doing more and not doing it well,” he told analysts in a call this week. “What do we want this business to look like in five or 10 years? And are these things adding value to the business or are they distracting us?”

Learn more about Starliner: NASA abandons Boeing’s cursed Starliner for its next missions to the Space Station