Honestly it’s a surprise they even completed the spacecraft at all.

There’s a bunch of rundowns on how Boeing used to operate for defense and aerospace contracts. They used to do “cost plus” which is essentially a blank check. Boeing was so used to just running around with other people’s money that when they introduced the fixed cost contract, they were unable to be cost effective because they never had to be before.

It also doesn’t help that Boeing uses about a billion subcontractors. There’s a whole story between Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne regarding the development of the propulsion systems, which involves a lot of corporate bullshit resulting in siloed work teams and a massive lack of trust.

SpaceX was totally vertically integrated the whole time, so their teams were building all of the components in-house and didn’t have to deal with subcontractors. With Boeing, probably 100 hands touched every single piece before it was finalized, and that costs so much extra money that would have been affordable under cost plus but is not affordable with a fixed cost.

It’s an honest-to-God miracle Boeing finished anything. They cut so many corners and blew off so many tests that they’re finding things like this on the launch pad, while SpaceX is literally landing and reusing boosters for almost every launch.

It’s not supposed to do that.