Boeing Just Brought Back A Starliner Veteran – Can He Save The Program?

After working on the Boeing Starliner project from 2011 through 2020, John Mulholland exited the company. He left the role of vice president of the space firm’s commercial crew program. On 30 January 2025, reports regarding John Mulholland’s return to Boeing hit the internet as he took the role of senior program advisor for Space Exploration Initiatives for the Boeing Exploration Systems division.

John Mulholland To Help Reshape The Future Of Boeing Starliner

Due to the mandatory age retirement requirement at Boeing, the now-serving vice president of the Starliner spacecraft program, Mark Nappi will retire next month. His retirement will leave the role he currently covers open for grabs. And Boeing is turning to a former staff with knowledge of the field.

Having worked on the Boeing Starliner project when we still knew it as the CST-100, John Mulholland has been named the successor to Mark Nappi. During the nine years of working at Boeing, John Mulholland has gathered “deep customer knowledge and product understanding.”

After taking over from Mark Nappi, Mulholland’s understanding of the industry “will be instrumental in leading the program.” As he takes on this new role as vice president of Boeing’s commercial crew program, his leadership will tackle a handful of issues.

One such issue is addressing the faults surrounding the CFT mission, which launched on 5 June 2024. This mission was responsible for taking two NASA astronauts to the ISS but has been plagued by some issues.

These issues were Helium leakage and thruster issues within the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Regardless of these issues, the Boeing spacecraft was able to reach the ISS. However, it promptly returned to Earth without its crew onboard.

This issue moved NASA to pull away from working with Boeing on the first full crew rotation mission. Mulholland’s work at Boeing might be kicked off by looking into this issue and ensuring that such doesn’t repeat itself in future.

NASA And Boeing Might Continue Collaborations In Future

Despite pulling away from using Boeing for the first full crew rotation mission, NASA might not be dumping the Starliner. NASA made the decision to move away from using Starliner for its coming space mission in 2024. But the agency gave a bit of hope.

According to this post, “the timing and configuration of Starliner’s next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is established.” The post adds that the “determination will include considerations for incorporating Crew Flight Test lessons learned, approvals of final certification products, and operational readiness.”

Over the past few months, Boeing has made some improvements towards resuming its work with NASA on space missions. According to Paul Hill, a member of the Independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), “integrated NASA-Boeing teams have begun closing out flight observations and in-flight anomalies.”

With John Mulholland taking over as the vice president of Boeing’s commercial crew program, we expect to see more moves in resuming work with NASA. Possibly before the end of 2025, Boeing might be able to resume working on NASA space missions using its Starliner spacecraft.