A familiar face is once again leading the Starliner development and mission execution work. On Thursday, a Boeing spokesperson confirmed that John Mulholland is back in the role of vice president of the company’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which manages work involving the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.
He previously served in the role from 2011 to 2020 when he became the VP and program manager for Boeing’s International Space Station program. He oversaw the initial development of the CST-100 before it was named “Starliner” and managed the program through the inaugural flight of the spacecraft: the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) in 2019.
“John Mulholland is vice president of Boeing’s Commercial Crew program following Mark Nappi’s decision last year to retire from Boeing,” said Boeing in a statement. “John’s deep customer knowledge and product understanding will be instrumental in leading the program.”
Nappi oversaw Starliner development and operations through two pivotal points: the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) in 2022 and the Crew Flight Test (CFT) in 2024. His current position is as the senior program advisor for Space Exploration Initiatives for Boeing’s Exploration Systems division.
“In this role, Nappi is focused on identifying opportunities for improvement across the division’s programs. He is responsible for ensuring there’s a disciplined approach to program management across Boeing’s human spaceflight programs,” stated a bio for Nappi prepared for the 2025 SpaceCom conference in Orlando, Florida.
“This includes incorporating lessons learned from Starliner into BES processes, relationships and contracts, as well as leading Lean activities and factory throughput on the Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage and Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) production.”
Nappi’s decision to retire is in line with Boeing corporate policy of a mandatory retirement at age 65. He will reach that age next month.
Nappi referenced his change in roles during his appearance on a SpaceCom panel entitled, “The Power of Public-Private Partnerships.”
“Good afternoon. My name is Mark Nappi. I work for Boeing. I’m kinda partly between jobs. I just got off the Commercial Crew program and in another month, I’ll be joining my wife as a retiree,” Nappi said in his introductory remarks. “I worked in human spaceflight for 40 years: space shuttle, SLS, Commercial Crew, some experience with the International Space Station.”
The panel didn’t focus much on the Starliner spacecraft or last year’s CFT mission, but one of the audience questions did focus on what changes Nappi would have wanted to see if he could turn back time and shift something with how NASA designed CCP.
“Traditional contracting with the government is more of a cost-type arrangement and when you’re working under a cost-type contract, and the government wants you to do it this way, you can offer ideas, but when they want you to do it this way, you do it this way,” Nappi said. “And it doesn’t matter how much it costs as a cost-type contract. You’re here to work for the government.
“But when we’re spending our money, we want to find the best way to get it to them. And that’s what we need to be able to figure out. If I was to be able to change things about the Commercial Crew Program, and you’d hear the same thing from the other provider, is I think we’d go back and revisit those requirements and make them more efficient.”
Starliner’s future
Mulholland returns to the management of Starliner as Boeing continues work to rectify the problems the occurred during the CFT mission. The spacecraft launched atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket on June 6, 2024, and ferried NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS.
Helium leaks and thruster issues within the propulsion system during the flight and while docked at the space station led NASA to ultimately decide to bring Starliner back to Earth without its crew onboard. The spacecraft landed at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on Sept. 7 and was subsequently transported back to the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Since then, Boeing hasn’t provided an update on the progress of changes to the spacecraft that will be used to fly the next mission. In October, NASA announced that it would not be moving forward with the first, full crew rotation mission with Starliner in the late summer of 2025.
Instead, NASA opted to have SpaceX, the other CCP provider, fly another Crew Dragon mission, dubbed Crew-11, no earlier than July.
“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,” NASA said in an Oct. 15, 2024, blog post. “This determination will include considerations for incorporating Crew Flight Test lessons learned, approvals of final certification products, and operational readiness.”
NASA didn’t close the door on having Starliner fly this year, stating that it “is keeping options on the table for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025.”
The most recent update on Starliner didn’t come from NASA or Boeing, but rather the independent Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), which met on Thursday, Jan. 30.
According to Space News, panel member Paul Hill said that NASA updated the group with the post-CFT assessment, adding that “significant progress is being made” and that “Integrated NASA-Boeing teams have begun closing out flight observations and in-flight anomalies.”
“The program anticipates the propulsive system anomalies will remain open,” Hill said, “pending ongoing test campaigns.”
Politics enter the picture
All this comes as Starliner’s former crew, Wilmore and Williams, were unwittingly thrust into the political arena on Tuesday.
That’s when, seemingly unprompted, SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted to X that President Trump asked SpaceX to “bring home the two astronauts stranded on the space station as soon as possible,” adding that it was “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”
Musk has been a close advisor to the President having donated millions to his electoral campaign and now overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency, which was formally established by an executive order on Jan. 20. Its purpose as stated is “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
In a post to his own social media site, Truth Social, Trump issued a similar statement, claiming that Wilmore and Williams were “virtually abandoned in space by the Biden administration,” stating that Musk and SpaceX should “go get” them.
Despite these statements, Wilmore and Williams have never been “stranded” or “abandoned” as Musk and Trump now claim. While Starliner was still docked to the ISS, NASA determined it to be safe to return them to Earth in an emergency scenario.
Additionally, temporary seats were installed into the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft as an option to leave, if necessary, once Starliner departed. Endeavour was used for the Crew-8 mission from March 4 to Oct. 25.
When NASA made the determination to return Starliner without crew on board, it simultaneously decided that Wilmroe and Williams would nominally return to Earth as part of the Crew-9 mission onboard the Dragon Freedom spacecraft, which is currently docked to the ISS.
Once the Starliner decision was made, Wilmore and Williams joined previous NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov as part of Crew-9. On Wednesday, NASA issued a brief statement
“NASA and SpaceX are expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as soon as practical, while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions,” a NASA spokesperson said in brief statement in response to press questions about the Musk and Trump comments.
The Crew-9 mission was set to depart the space station in late February, but that was delayed until late-March due to unfinished work on the new Dragon capsule slated to fly the Crew-10 mission. But fresh problems with that capsule are expected to delay that mission further.
“Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires great attention to detail,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s CCP manager said in a Dec. 17 blog post. “We appreciate the hard work by the SpaceX team to expand the Dragon fleet in support of our missions and the flexibility of the station program and expedition crews as we work together to complete the new capsule’s readiness for flight.”
Spaceflight Now asked NASA on Dec. 17, 2024, for further information about what specifically was delaying the completion of the new capsule but the space agency has yet to provide any additional information.
This isn’t the first time that Musk made provocative comments connected to Boeing and Starliner. In September 2024, when SpaceX was facing fines from the Federal Aviation Administration connected Falcon rocket launches in 2023, Musk alleged a double standard.
“The FAA space division is harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect safety while giving a free pass to Boeing even after NASA concluded that their spacecraft was not safe enough to bring back the astronauts,” Musk said in a Sept. 17 post on X. “There need to be resignations from the FAA leadership.”
Then in November, Musk stated “There is no logical purpose to Starliner, given that NASA plans to deorbit Space Station in ~5 years.”
Because Starliner is not yet certified, NASA has been using SpaceX singularly for its six-month crew rotation missions. Boeing is on contract to perform six such flights to and from the ISS as part of its CCP contract, but there may only be about 10 more opportunities after this year with plans still in motion to deorbit the space station around or 2030.
