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One way to read the delay was that the technical teams were working against a deadline clock that started as soon as the vehicle landed, to analyze and propose remedies for the thruster failures and helium leaks. And now they've hit that deadline, having found no good fixes.

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I suspect it's more at a program level. Boeing have lost a lot of money on Starliner, may lose a lot more, and already seem lukewarm on continuing with the project. It's actually NASA that's keener on keeping it running, so that they are not entirely dependent on SpaceX for human spaceflight.

NASA might need to redo the tender for the 2nd supplier of crewed missions, regardless of the (even further) reputational hit to Boeing.

ISS is not going to stay up there for long enough for a new second supplier to make sense.

That doesn't seem right. It's supposed to be up there through to 2030+, and the point of a 2nd supplier is just to ensure there aren't any blocker level problems if a single supplier has issues.

Yes, because they're an inferior option to supply launch services to the ISS.

Stop apologizing for a company that let their standards slip and endangered the lives of multiple astronauts not to mention wasting billions of tax payer dollars.

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