It’s Not All Bad for Boeing

The Paris Air Show was deemed disappointing; manufacture of the already much-delayed Dreamliner has been frozen for a month. While reading about oscillating stock prices, NLRB conflicts, high-profile accusations of hemorrhaged funds in the companys military tanker program, and this weeks anxiety over American Airlines contracts, a Washingtonian may well wonder: What is going well for Boeing?

While it did secure orders from American for 200 737samong them the new, Renton-built, fuel-efficient model. And Boeing continues to be successful independent of its aircraft, especially in space. The company announced Monday that its FAB-T program, providing protected wideband satellite communications, is nearly complete. In April, Boeing won a major contract with Thales Alenia Space to provide system integration and support for Iridium NEXT. Iridium NEXT is a satellite constellation being built and launched by Iridium Communications, Inc. The constellation will be the newest element in the worlds farthest-reaching communications network, for which Boeing has already provided support for a decade.

With the retirement of the countrys iconic shuttle program, Americas only human toe-hold in orbit right now is the space station, and manned spaceflight must focus on transport of people and materials to and from that space station. The evolving space program gives America the opportunity to strengthen its transport infrastructure as well as its unmanned satellite presence, and there is no better-positioned contender for the job than Boeing, whose Defense, Space & Security branch is a $32 billion business.

The company has long been a leader in spacecraft manufacture, having produced the Gemini, Apollo, Lunar Orbiter, and Mariner-10 spacecraft, in addition to others. In April NASA awarded various companies $269 million for commercial spacecraft development. Boeing, among those companies, was chosen to build its CST-100 crew capsule. As with the commercial aircraft market there are many players in the field of transport spacecraft, and theres more than one local representative in the mix: Jeff Bezos company Blue Origin took home $22 million of that $269 million. While Boeings $92 million looks like a drop in the bucket to a company that bagged more than $11 billion in new contracts at the Paris Air Show, it represents a significant chunk of public-sector funding in what is evolving to become a private market.

But Boeings biggest potential for contribution to the next generation of space exploration may lie in its satellite program. Old hand at satellite manufacture, Boeing fleshed out the defense and communications portions of its aerospace arm by expanding into satellites back in 1963. In 2000, Boeing announced it was buying the satellite manufacturing arm of Hughes Electronics for $3.75 billion. Eleven years later, Boeing is the world leader in geostationary satellite manufacture, and Monday successfully launched its second Air Force-contracted GPS IFF satellite. Boeing Satellite Systems International Inc., Boeings satellite division, estimates that it has built about 40 percent of all the communications satellites still in commercial use today.

With its continued dedication to spacecraft, Boeing has reminded Washington to look skyward. While post-Paris inquietude and the retirement of Atlantis make things look bleak, the company has been leading the way in the next generation of space exploration, all along.