This excerpt describes a fateful meeting 10 years ago at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, where the space agency's leaders met to decide which companies should be awarded billions of dollars to launch astronauts into orbit.

Despite a test flight that docked with the International Space Station but left the Boeing Starliner capsule returning empty, the spacecraft still could become a significant part of NASA's commercial payload program.

As part of its Commercial Crew program, NASA picked two private companies to develop spacecraft capable of sending astronauts to the International Space Station: SpaceX and Boeing. While SpaceX's Crew Dragon quickly became a tour de force,