Houston, there’s a problem at Boeing!
The embattled aerospace giant — which helped send the first man to the Moon — is exploring the sale of parts of its NASA business, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The sale, which is in the early stages and may not result in a deal, would include Boeing’s troubled Starliner rocket and operations supporting the International Space Station, according to people familiar with the matter. told the Wall Street Journal,
A Boeing spokesperson told The Post that the company does not comment on speculation.
New Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg’s exit from the space race comes as Boeing faces a financial crisis due to a five-week strike that has halted ground production.
The aerospace company’s Starliner spacecraft has been hampered for years by development delays and technical problems, with private costs rising to more than $1.8 billion.
Two NASA astronauts flown to the International Space Station by Boeing remain stranded there and are scheduled to return in February on a plane from rival SpaceX.
The sale of Boeing’s space business would be a sharp change from the company’s space heyday — from work on the Saturn V rocket used to land humans on the Moon to building the International Space Station, which lasted 25 years. Is in class.
Sources told the Journal that Boeing will likely retain its position overseeing the Space Launch System, a large rocket NASA is paying the company to build for future lunar missions.
The giant rocket successfully completed its first flight nearly two years ago, but Boeing has faced quality-control problems with the system since then.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been looking for a buyer for United Launch Alliance, the companies’ joint rocket-launch venture, for more than a year.
ortberg, who Took command of Boeing in August And long-established aviation giant Rockwell Collins has said basically everything except the core commercial and defense businesses is on the table for sale.
“It’s better to do less and do better than to do more and not do well,” Ortberg said during a call with analysts this week.
In September, Ortberg removed the head of Boeing’s defense and space business.
In the first nine months of this year, the company’s space business lost $3.1 billion on revenues of $18.5 billion.
Before Ortberg joined the company, Boeing was in talks with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to have the private space company take over some of Boeing’s NASA programs, sources told the Journal.
Boeing is in hot water as NASA has said it wants to have the space station in orbit around 2030 and the future of Starliner remains in question.
Agency officials had hoped that Starliner would be a means of transportation to get astronauts to and from the space station, but safety concerns have made that reality uncertain.
