Boeing seems upset with NASA’s inspector general

Enlarge / An artist's concept of Starliner on top of an Atlas V rocket. (credit: Boeing)

Last week, NASA's inspector general issued a report critical of NASA's extra payments worth $287 million to Boeing for operational flights of its Starliner spacecraft. "In our judgment, the additional compensation was unnecessary," the agency's inspector general, Paul Martin, wrote in his report.

For the first time, the report also published an estimate of seat prices that NASA will pay Boeing for crewed Starliner missions to the International Space Station alongside prices the organization will pay for SpaceX's Dragon vehicle: $90 million for Starliner and $55 million for Dragon. Each capsule is expected to carry four astronauts to the space station during a nominal mission.

This report has evidently not sat well with Boeing, which on Monday fired off a lengthy statement in reply to the inspector general's report.

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