GAO Finds NASA SLS Costs Not Credible
Space Launch System: Management Tools Should Better Track to Cost and Schedule Commitments to Adequately Monitor Increasing Risk, GAO
“The cost and schedule estimates for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Space Launch System (SLS) program substantially complied with five of six relevant best practices, but could not be deemed fully reliable because they only partially met the sixth best practice–credibility. While an independent NASA office reviewed the estimate developed by the program and as a result the program made some adjustments, officials did not commission the development of a separate independent estimate to compare to the program estimate to identify areas of discrepancy or difference. In addition, the program did not cross-check its estimate using an alternative methodology.”
Congress knew this in 2011 but they still push SLS because it’s money for their districts. Perhaps Senator Shelby should focus his transparency push on SLS accounting.
Billions of dollars wasted to preserve a program, a system, a method that simply doesn’t work.
There are both Republicans and Democrats who are guilty of protecting their kingdoms. It’s shameful really.
GAO is only calling for independent assessments of SLS cost. They should be _making_ independent assessments.