Boeing among top NASA contractors plagued by billions in cost overruns and delays, report finds

Their costs are rocketing upwards.Several of NASA’s top private contractors have been plagued by budget overruns and delays that have forced taxpayers to cough up billions extra, a scathing new study has found.Between fiscal years 2021 and 2024, the space agency shelled out some $60 billion in contracts while recouping $7.7 million in civil fines and $9.6 million in criminal restitution, while the Treasury Department recovered $33.5 million in fraudulent and wasteful spending, the study from transparency advocacy group Open The Books noted.Among the worst offenders has been Boeing, which was forced to make 71 “corrective action requests” to the government related to its products between 2021 and 2023, the study found, citing NASA watchdog probe data.Most notably, the aerospace company was tasked with developing the Boeing Starliner, a spacecraft intended to move crew in and out of the International Space Station (ISS).Last summer, the Starliner made international headlines after a thruster glitch left two astronauts — Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — stranded for months beyond their eight-day mission.That same Boeing Starliner cost about $1.8 billion more than estimated, and its development ran six years behind schedule, an inspector general report found.The spacecraft was originally intended to be finished in 2017 at a price of $962 million, now, its cost is expected to come in at $2.8 billion.NASA has since announced plans to launch the SpaceX Dragon to bring home Williams and Wilmore as soon as Sunday.In all, NASA dished out around $6.4 billion in contracts to Boeing between fiscal years 2021 and 2025, making it the space agency’s second-highest paid contractor after the California Institute of Technology ($9.8 billion) and ahead of SpaceX ($5.4 billion) during that period, per Open The Books.Much of the spending on Boeing has been the $2.7 billion set aside for the Ares 1 Upper Stage, according to Open Secrets, which flagged the expense listed at ...