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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 22 2021, @04:48AM   Printer-friendly

NASA has begun a study of the SLS rocket's affordability [Updated]:

Original story: NASA is conducting an internal review of the Space Launch System rocket's affordability, two sources have told Ars Technica.

Concerned by the program's outsized costs, the NASA transition team appointed by President Joe Biden initiated the study. The analysis is being led by Paul McConnaughey, a former deputy center director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, as well as its chief engineer.

The SLS rocket program has been managed by Marshall for more than a decade. Critics have derided it as a "jobs program" intended to retain employees at key centers, such as Alabama-based Marshall, as well as those at primary contractors such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Aerojet Rocketdyne. Such criticism has been bolstered by frequent schedule delays—the SLS was originally due to launch in 2016, and the rocket will now launch no sooner than 2022—as well as cost overruns.

For now, costs seem to be the driving factor behind the White House's concerns. With a maximum cadence of one launch per year, the SLS rocket is expected to cost more than $2 billion per flight, and that is on top of the $20 billion NASA has already spent developing the vehicle and its ground systems. Some of the incoming officials do not believe the Artemis Moon Program is sustainable with such launch costs.

Update: After this story was published, NASA released the following statement at 11pm ET on Monday regarding the internal study:

NASA is conducting an internal study of the timing and sequence of lunar missions with available resources, and with the guidance that SLS and Orion will be providing crew transportation to the Gateway. The backbone for NASA's Moon to Mars plans are the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, ground systems at Kennedy Space Center, Gateway in lunar orbit and human landing system. We currently are alsoassessing various elements of our programs to find efficiencies and opportunities to reduce costs, and this exercise is ongoing. This will include conversations with our industry partners. Budget forecasts and internal agency reviews are common practice as they help us with long-term planning. The agency anticipates taking full advantage of the powerful SLS capabilities, and this effort will improve the current construct associated with executing the development, production and operations of the NASA's Artemis missions.


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  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday March 22 2021, @07:32AM (3 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday March 22 2021, @07:32AM (#1127388) Homepage Journal

    We all know that the SLS is nothing but political corruption: funnel as much money as possible into the "right" companies, who then funnel part of it back to the politicians. First-world corruption is indirect.

    Still, this "review" is a positive sign. It means that the powers-that-be realize they cannot continue with this particular instance of pork. But they can't just stop, without admitting what they were doing. So they trigger this internal review, which - in a couple of years - will lead to the end of the program.

    The real question is: where and how will they funnel the pork the next time?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 22 2021, @02:06PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday March 22 2021, @02:06PM (#1127447)

    Well, everything you say is true, but... if you think of NASA as a branch of the military, what they are doing is training and retaining highly skilled operators. From that perspective, this is a bargain basement operation keeping America's Space Force Strong.

    Shut down NASA's funding like you'd flush a bunch of high school kid employees from a fast food stand during the slow season, and you'll be looking at decades of rebuilding to get back to the capability levels we have today.

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    • (Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Monday March 22 2021, @02:33PM

      by Socrastotle (13446) on Monday March 22 2021, @02:33PM (#1127472) Journal

      Kennedy's "to the moon" speech was in 1962 and we had literally zero experience in space beyond Low Earth Orbit, and even there we had next to no experience. 7 years later, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would walk on the moon. Today, more than 50 years later, NASA can't manage to get a man off the ground using NASA based tech, after spending gratuitously and working on the SLS for more than a decade. There has clearly *already* been an extremely dramatic decline of competence and capability at NASA.

      I don't think I would support scrapping them, but at the same time I don't think much would be lost. People dramatically overestimate what we're learning from probes and rovers. Arguably the single most important discovery [space.com] of Curiosity is that NASA's surface, contrary to what everybody thought is actually relatively moist - about 2% water per volume. That's enough to yield about a liter of water per cubic foot of soil. And that was a huge game changer and leap in understanding. But then aren't I contradicting myself? No. The first [successful] probe was sent to Mars in 1964. It took us 57 years of probes and rovers to learn... that the soil is relatively moist.

      The one reason I would even consider supporting scrapping NASA is because I think it would likely create a vacuum. If our government disappeared tomorrow - it wouldn't be anarchy, at least not for long. It'd simply create a vacuum and the next strongest player would come to fill that vacuum. I expect the same would be true of NASA. People have a desire to see advancements in space, and NASA - to some very mild degree sates that. If they did not exist, who would pick up the mantle? And would they be better or worse? The reason I have no way of even intelligently speculating about the answer to that question is why I think we're better off with them for now, but they're certainly far past their prime.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @07:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @07:42PM (#1127639)

    This review is the last gasp of the Bridenstine administration's reforms. Expect Nelson to find a way to kill it or worse now that he's in charge. He's exactly scummy enough to claim that cutting Commercial Crew is the way forward. Hell, it wouldn't even be the first time he'll have cut CC's budget to feed SLS. He and Shelby redirected half of CC's budget under Obama and were mad when they couldn't get the rest.