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khallow [soylentnews.org] writes:

Eric Berger reports [arstechnica.com] ("Finally, we know production costs for SLS and Orion, and they’re wild", Ars Technica):

NASA Inspector General Paul Martin serves as an independent watchdog for the space agency's myriad activities. For nearly the entirety of his time as inspector general, since his appointment in 2009, Martin has tracked NASA's development of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. Although his office has issued a dozen reports or so on various aspects of these programs, he has never succinctly stated his thoughts about the programs—until Tuesday.

Appearing before a House Science Committee hearing [soylentnews.org] on NASA's Artemis program [Wikipedia description [soylentnews.org]], Martin revealed the operational costs of the big rocket and spacecraft for the first time. Moreover, he took aim at NASA and particularly its large aerospace contractors for their "very poor" performance in developing these vehicles.

Martin said that the operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch—for just the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems—will total $4.1 billion. This is, he said, "a price tag that strikes us as unsustainable." With this comment, Martin essentially threw down his gauntlet and said NASA cannot have a meaningful exploration program based around SLS and Orion at this cost.

In his testimony [soylentnews.org] to the Committee, IG Martin states:

Our broad, years-long oversight has identified several interrelated challenges NASA must address to achieve its ambitious Artemis goals, including unsustainable costs, a lack of transparency into funding requirements, and risks associated with its modified program management and acquisition practices designed to reduce costs and accelerate the mission schedule.

On the first point:

• ”$53 billion on the Artemis program between fiscal years (FY) 2021 and 2025” [budgeted – Martin provides further argument that this cost is deeply discounted]
• ”$4.1 billion per-launch cost of the SLS/Orion system for at least the first four Artemis missions “
• ”Multiple factors contribute to the high cost of Exploration Systems Development (ESD) Division programs—SLS, Orion, and Exploration Ground Systems—including the use of sole-source, cost-plus contracts; the inability to definitize key contract terms in a timely manner; and the fact that except for the Orion capsule, its subsystems, and supporting launch facilities, all components are expendable and “single use” unlike emerging commercial space flight systems. “

Note the mention of cost-plus contracts which deeply favor contractors who procrastinate and deliberately incur costs to milk the contract. While this was the only time that was mentioned in the testimony, the continued, widespread use of these contracts indicates the fundamental frivolity of NASA's efforts here.

On the second point:

• ”In particular, NASA does not have a comprehensive and accurate estimate that accounts for all Artemis program-related costs. Because NASA has not defined Artemis as a formal program under the Agency’s Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements, an Artemis-wide full life-cycle cost estimate is not required. Instead, NASA’s disparate programs and projects individually submit budget estimates through their divisions and directorates to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer. “
• ”When aggregating all relevant costs across Mission Directorates, we projected NASA will spend $93 billion on the Artemis effort from FY 2012 through FY 2025 “

In other words, due to lack of a collective estimate of costs associated with SLS, Orion, and other aspects of the Artemis program, Martin’s office estimated that costs should be almost double what is officially forecast. There is a lot of hidden iceberg to these cost estimates that would be in the open with an effort to account for them. As Berger noted in the Ars Technica article, this also should means that the $4 billion per launch estimate should be almost doubled as well.

On the third point, here’s an example from SLS:

Notably, in our review of SLS Program cost reporting we found that the Program exceeded its Agency Baseline Commitment (ABC)—that is, the cost and schedule baselines committed to Congress against which a program is measured—by at least 33 percent at the end of FY 2019. This was due to cost increases tied to development of Artemis I and a December 2017 replan that removed almost $1 billion of costs from the Program’s ABC without lowering the baseline, thereby masking the impact of Artemis I’s projected 19-month schedule delay. NASA subsequently notified Congress of its adjusted baseline that reflected both the cost increase—projected to reach 43 percent by November 2021—and the removal of costs identified by our office.

We projected NASA would have spent more than $17 billion on the SLS Program by the end of FY 2020, including almost $6 billion not tracked or reported as part of the ABC. Each of the major element contracts for building the SLS for Artemis I—Stages, Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, Boosters, and RS-25 Engines—have experienced technical challenges, performance issues, and requirement changes that collectively have resulted in $2 billion of cost overruns and increases and at least 2 years of schedule delays. We reported in October 2018 that Core Stage production was the primary factor contributing to overall SLS launch delays due to its position on the critical path and corresponding management, technical, and infrastructure issues driven mostly by The Boeing Company’s poor performance.

In other words, this process which was supposed to reduce cost has the opposite effect with significant schedule slippage and cost overruns.

One important aspect of this funding is that $93 billion is not only roughly four straight years of NASA funding, it’s a huge number of potential launches on existing launch vehicles. For example, a couple months back, I found an estimate [soylentnews.org] of how much NASA spent on launches (and other stuff like uncrewed cargo vehicles and crewed vehicles to ISS). It was roughly $82 million per launch for 39 launches (I made the erroneous calculation of $170 million per at the time). So that $93 billion of costs could have bought over a thousand Falcon 9 launches today. So instead of a vast amount of space activity, we’re getting token progress towards some lunar missions.

Eric Berger noted at the conclusion of his article that congressional members seemed more interested in curbing NASA’s use of cheap commercial launch technology than in fixing the mess:

Lest anyone doubt this, House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) took aim at NASA's commercial space efforts in her opening statement at the hearing. The context of her statement concerns NASA's desire to purchase commercial services for spaceflight in the future rather than oversee their development in-house like it did with SLS and Orion.

"I find the sum of these actions to be very troubling," Johnson said. "And it raises the question of whether NASA will even retain the capabilities and workforce within the agency that will be needed to get US astronauts to Mars if all of these privatization plans are realized."

At least it answers the question of where congressional priorities lie.

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