SpaceX launches half-empty spaceship so it can bring Boeing's astronaut crew home next year

Screenshot of SpaceX Crew Dragon launching from Florida's Cape Canaveral on September 28, 2024. — SpaceX's Crew Dragon launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Saturday.
NASA

SpaceX launched a half-empty Crew Dragon for two Boeing astronauts awaiting a trip home.
NASA made a hard call after Boeing's spaceship glitched. The astronauts won't return until 2025.
SpaceX's spaceship has outpaced Boeing's, delivering astronauts faster for nearly half the cost.

SpaceX just launched a half-empty Crew Dragon spaceship into orbit for two astronauts who have been waiting for a trip home.

Normally, Crew Dragon carries four astronauts to space at a time, but for the launch on Saturday, only two were aboard.

The unusual mission is the result of one of the toughest safety decisions NASA has had to make in decades. It's also a huge blow to Boeing's space program.

Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbunov inside Space X's Crew Dragon during launch on September 28, 2024. — Nick Hague and Alexander Gorbunov inside Space X's Crew Dragon on Saturday.
NASA

Boeing's astronauts have been stuck in space for months

In June, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams became the first astronauts to fly aboard Boeing's Starliner ship, which is supposed to be another ship in NASA's roster alongside the SpaceX Crew Dragon. The duo was conducting the ship's first crewed test flight, designed to prove it was ready for routine human spaceflight.

But the Starliner's thrusters started glitching as it approached the International Space Station shortly after launch.

After some troubleshooting, the ship ultimately docked to the ISS and Williams and Wilmore made it to the station safely. NASA and Boeing weren't sure how the thrusters would perform on the way back to Earth, though.

After weeks of testing, analysis, and reviews, NASA officials did not feel confident enough to trust Starliner with the astronauts' lives again.

In a decision that shook up the agency's human spaceflight schedule, NASA sent Starliner back to Earth without its crew.

starliner space capsule gumdrop shaped spaceship under three jellyfish-shaped parachutes in cloudy skies all in black and white — Starliner drifts down to the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico under its parachutes in the night.
NASA

Wilmore and Williams will instead return on the Crew Dragon that launched Saturday. Two other astronauts, Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov, are inside the ship as it flies to the ISS. Wilmore and Williams will join their mission, called Crew-9, and complete its months-long planned shift on the station.

That means Wilmore and Williams come home in February at the earliest.

two astronauts inside the space station one standing upright with a microphone one upside down with his feet on the ceiling and his arms crossed in between walls full of gadgets and computers — Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore talk with reporters from the International Space Station after their spaceship departs without them.
NASA TV

Their mission was originally planned for about eight days, though NASA officials have said that was a tentative timeline since they were conducting a test flight.

SpaceX clobbered Boeing in this space race

SpaceX and Boeing developed and flew their respective spaceships through the same NASA initiative, the Commercial Crew Program.

One was much cheaper, though. NASA granted Boeing $4.2 billion to get Starliner space-station ready, and gave SpaceX $2.6 billion for Crew Dragon.

boeing starliner spaceship gumdrop shaped white capsule with blue and black detailings docked to a wirey port high above blue earth with clouds — Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docked to the International Space Station, as seen from a window on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
NASA

What's more, SpaceX did it faster. Crew Dragon successfully flew its first astronauts four years ago and has been shuttling people to and from the ISS ever since.

The Commercial Crew Program was never a competition, NASA officials have said. But SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tauntingly pointed out the disparities in an X post ahead of Williams' and Wilmore's launch aboard Starliner.

Although Boeing got $4.2 billion to develop an astronaut capsule and SpaceX only got $2.6 billion, SpaceX finished 4 years sooner.

Note, the crew capsule design of Dragon 2 has almost nothing in common with Dragon 1.

Too many non-technical managers at Boeing. https://t.co/bTXWAfxfrh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2024

Boeing's agreement with NASA is a fixed-price contract, which means the company has had to cover all additional expenses. With multiple technical issues and delays throughout the spaceship's development, according to SpaceNews, Boeing has lost about $1.6 billion on Starliner.

The fate of Starliner is unclear. NASA has not yet announced whether the ship will need additional testing to make it eligible for regular astronaut rotations.

Starliner's uncrewed return was a success

Starliner landed in the New Mexico desert under its parachutes on September 6.

Steve Stich, the head of the NASA Commercial Crew Program, later said the astronauts would have been "safe" returning aboard Starliner.

smiling butch wilmore and suni williams floating laying in a white circular tunnel around a port in the space station — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams inside the vestibule between the space station and Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.
NASA

Hindsight, of course, is twenty-twenty.

"If we'd had a model that would have predicted what we saw tonight perfectly, yeah, it looks like an easy decision to go say we could have had a crewed fight," Stich said after the Starliner landing. "But we didn't have that."

Astronauts left behind

Meanwhile, two NASA astronauts who were supposed to be part of the Crew-9 mission had to stay behind.

Instead of launching with their crewmates on Saturday, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson watched from the ground.

two women up close looking into the distance standing in front of a railing high above a swamp — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were supposed to fly on the Crew-9 mission.
SpaceX

Crew-9 would have been Cardman's first spaceflight and Wilson's fourth. But their seats in the Crew Dragon are empty, since NASA is reserving them for Williams and Wilmore when the spaceship returns to Earth next year.

In an X post, Cardman said that handing the spaceship over to Hague was "both heartbreaking and an honor."

She wished they could all fly together, she added, "but we choose without hesitation to be part of something much larger than ourselves."

Meanwhile, the two Starliner astronauts will continue working full-time conducting experiments and maintenance on the ISS.

In a call with reporters on September 13, Williams said she missed her two dogs, and Wilmore said he would miss most of his daughter's senior year of high school. But both were adamant that this is all part of the job.

"It's a very risky business and things do not always turn out the way you want," Wilmore said.

"90% of our training is preparing for the unexpected," he added. "Because we are pushing the edges of the envelope in everything that we do and it is not easy."

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