And so, the long, long, way too long ordeal of the astronauts with aerospace stock Boeing’s (BA) Starliner project are finally preparing to go home. After the eight to 10 day trip turned, inexplicably, into an eight to 10 month ordeal, it is finally ending. And the news was welcome to shareholders as well, as shares gained nearly 3% in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
The Crew-10 flight is expected to launch March 12, which will serve as the ride home for not only Crew-9, but also for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been in space since last June, though they were at no point stranded, a point both they and Boeing seemed occasionally desperate to bring up.
Once a “handover period” of several days is accomplished, reports note, the crew, along with Williams and Wilmore, will make their way back to Earth and ultimately splash down off the coast of Florida. Though politics did, almost inevitably, figure into this trip, with the Trump administration blaming the Biden administration for having left the astronauts up there in the first place, the astronauts themselves suggested that politics played no hand in this.
Getting Into Missile Defense
In perhaps an even more unexpected development, reports note that Boeing has just finished a set of 20 new silos in Alaska for the Fort Greely missile defense system. With the new silos in place, the fort can now fire 64 missile interceptors instead of the 44 that were previously available.
The missiles are part of a system known as the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, which is by itself better than 20 years old. It was specifically designed to intercept threats from Iran and North Korea, and it already may be in line for further expansion. Senator Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, is said to be working on a bill that adds another 16 silos, taking the total number from 64 to 80, reports noted.
Is Boeing a Good Stock to Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on BA stock based on 13 Buys, five Holds and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 19.66% loss in its share price over the past year, the average BA price target of $196.88 per share implies 20.35% upside potential.
