WOEING: NASA Is Losing Patience With Boeing’s Indefinitely Delayed Starliner.

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, a spacecraft for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station built under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, is taking shape so slowly that NASA wants to move some novice astronauts assigned to Boeing’s planned flights to competitor SpaceX’s Crew Dragon so that they can get some spaceflight experience, Ars Technica reported Tuesday.

Citing two anonymous sources, Ars Technica’s Eric Berger reported that the changes have yet to be approved by NASA’s Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, the group in charge of flight assignment.

If the changes are happening, the three astronauts originally assigned to Starliner—Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada and Jeanette Epps—will likely fly on the SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission, the company’s fifth operational flight to the ISS, targeted for launch no earlier than August 2022.

Plus: “It’s unclear when Starliner may attempt to launch again, because more than two months later, Boeing still hasn’t figured out what exactly caused those valves to shut abnormally.”

The previous report indicated Boeing was studying whether to remove the valves — a painstaking process — so I guess they’re still studying.