Not only do Boeing have problems with their aircraft manufacturing business, with two major fatal air crashes, safety incidents and quality problems, but they also have huge issues with their projects for NASA.

The Starliner

For several years, the only way that crew could be delivered to and brought back from the International Space Station (ISS) was using Russian spacecraft. Given the state of political and financial relations with Russia, this solution was not acceptable, so NASA commissioned two companies, SpaceX and Boeing, to produce alternatives.

Boeing's system, the Starliner, has been plagued with problems, and is currently docked with the ISS and is not considered safe to use to bring the two astronauts it carried into orbit home again. The original mission was planned to be 8 days, but it is now likely that the astronauts will be stranded until next year. Bearing in mind that their luggage was removed just before launch, and substituted with essential spare parts, and that there are no laundry facilities on the ISS, I don't think that their stay in space is fun.

NASA have suggested that the astronauts could be brought home on the next SpaceX mission, with the Starliner being flown back to earth unmanned; Boeing, of course, are not happy with that plan.

It has now emerged, as reported on Quartz, that " Boeing removed the Starliner’s autonomous undocking feature from its software", making an unmanned return impossible. Boeing have offered to roll out an update to correct this problem, but NASA are worried that could introduce other problems.

The New Moon Rocket

NASA has a long term project to return to people to the moon. This, of course, involves a new rocket, the Space Launch System. The launcher is a multi-stage rocket, with each stage being developed by a different subcontractor. One of those subcontractor is Boeing, who are responsible for the upper stage.

The Space Launch System is currently running 3 years late, with a 200% budget overrun, and Boeing are being blamed for the lion's share of the delay and overspend. Boeing is blamed for shoddy work, according to this report on Futurism, and for mismanagement and an inexperienced workforce, according to this report on Flyingmag.

The Fallout

How much longer can Boeing stay in business by stumbling from one crisis to another?

Personally, I think that the chickens will come home to roost in about 18 months. This is (only just) long enough to see if Boeing's new CEO makes any improvement. In the meantime, Boeing's share price will continue to slide, and the market share in aviation will continue to wither away; reduced stock market valuation will make it very difficult to get investment in a very investment intensive business, making it impossible for them to start new projects .

I see 4 possible outcomes:

1. A government takeover of all or part of Boeing. This seems unlikely, as it is totally against current government policy, which is built on outsourcing.
2. Boeing could be forced to break up into smaller companies focused on specific markets, similar to what was forced upon Bell (see here on Wikipedia) in 1982. This also seems unlikely, since Boeing already tried this without success (which is how Spirit came into being).
3. Boeing could be forced into being taken over by someone with suitable experience, either as a whole or in parts. There are several contenders to take over various parts of Boeing.
4. Boeing could be placed under the management of a consortium of companies, along with probable government participation (because the businesses of Boeing are so strategically important).