More Bad SLS Orion News From GAO
GAO Report: NASA: Assessments of Major Projects
“Three of the largest projects in this critical stage of development– Exploration Ground Systems, Orion, and the Space Launch System– continue to face cost, schedule, and technical risks. In April 2017, we found that the first integrated test flight of these systems, known as Exploration Mission-1, will likely be delayed beyond November 2018.14 NASA concurred with our findings and is currently conducting an assessment to establish a new launch date. Because NASA’s assessment is ongoing, the cost implications of the schedule delay and its effect on the projects’ baselines are still unknown. However, given that these three human space exploration programs represent more than half of NASA’s current portfolio development cost baseline, a cost increase or delay could have substantial repercussions not only for these programs but NASA’s entire portfolio.”
With due respect to the GAO, I wish they put some basics in these reports in plain English. What was the original development cost estimate, for what content (including x number of test flights, with what technology, etc.)? On being late, stop indulging these programs that say if they’d had a peak of 5 bazillion over 3 years they would not have spent as much total. We know that’s BS, true only in the abstract, an unlikely profile no one should have used for an estimate in the first place unless they were delusional. Admit as well, a development overrun already tells you about the poor prospects for recurring flight rate capability. A project that takes forever to finish has a low productivity workforce, and that exact same workforce will become the operational workforce, and it will be low productivity there too.