It took them a decade and a half because Boeing learned the hard way that you have to actually be efficient when you don’t get a cost plus contract. Their entire system was setup to extract as much money from the government as possible, not to deliver product on time.
Late and over a budget is how you maximize profit in cost plus contracts.
I'm not shitting on Starliner, it's great that we have another person-rated capsule for spaceflight.
I'm just pointing this out because there are many people apparently who are confusing Starliner for Boeing's version of Starship, i.e. a whole rocket plus crew rated capsule.
Well, "ocean liner" means a large oceangoing ship, "airliner" means large airplane, so people could be forgiven for thinking a "starliner" was a large spaceship and not a tiny pod.
Depends on what you consider starting. 16 years is probably the most reasonable number, but you could argue for as little as 6.
Initial work on Dragon began in 2004, it ‘entered service’ in 2009, had its first mission in 2010, but first connected to the ISS in 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon
Work on a crewed version was officially mentioned in 2006 though they only got a contract for manned missions in 2014 and the first manned mission was 16 November 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-1
It's kind of useful perspective that when the contracts for this were being awarded, Boeing argued that SpaceX shouldn't get the contract at all because Boeing, having "human spaceflight heritage", was guaranteed to do the better job than an inexperienced upstart. Plus the extra $400M they extorted out of NASA despite this being a fixed price, milestone based contract.
> when the contracts for this were being awarded, Boeing argued that SpaceX shouldn't get the contract at all because Boeing, having "human spaceflight heritage", was guaranteed to do the better job than an inexperienced upstart.
I think it's useful to note that this wasn't just Boeing's opinion - it was pretty widely believed in the industry. And not without reason - Boeing had Shuttle heritage.
It wan’t an inaccurate assessment. SpaceX was working on life support for a crewed module 14+ years before their first successful manned launch. IE: It took them longer than Boeing.
However the missing context is SpaceX put in 8+ years into the project before getting the award which offset most of the issues.
So it worked out well for NASA, but SpaceX was approaching it more as a prestige project than a profitable one.
It's a great accomplishment but it's not "super crazy"