Inspector General Flunks NASA Management On Artemis/SLS/Orion
NASA’s Cost Estimating and Reporting Practices for Multi-Mission Programs
“Congress is not receiving the federally mandated cost and schedule information it needs to make fully informed funding decisions for NASAs multi-mission programs. Specifically, for the programs supporting Artemis, the Agencys return-to- the-Moon and ultimately to Mars effort, NASA is circumventing required cost and schedule controls by categorizing certain production costs as operations costs when, in our opinion, they should be categorized as development costs. When the Constellation Program was cancelled in 2010, Congress directed NASA to continue development of several major components, including the rocket, crew capsule, and ground launch infrastructure. Without clearly defined missions for these major items, NASA only made cost and schedule commitments to Congress to demonstrate the initial capability of each system. The three separately-managed programs the Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion Multi- Purpose Crew Vehicle (Orion), and Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) will provide the primary components for Artemis missions, the first of which is scheduled to launch no earlier than May 2022. Even though NASA has multiple Artemis missions planned, it has not adjusted the three programs life-cycle cost estimates or commitments to account for future missions. The result is incomplete cost estimates and commitments for these programs and missions.
We raised questions with the Agencys recent update to NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR) 7120.5F, NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements, which establishes the requirements, life-cycle processes, and procedures by which NASA formulates and implements space flight programs and projects. Rather than resolving the major shortcomings with the Agencys cost estimating and reporting practices, the recent policy amendments formalized known deficiencies as acceptable management practices. NASA had previously stated that it intended to establish new policies and procedures that would provide additional transparency for major programs with multiple deliverables and unspecified end points. Instead, it codified its poor cost estimating and reporting practices in a new policy that fails to comply with Title 51 of the United States Code, which requires the Agency to annually provide an estimate of the life- cycle cost for major programs, with a detailed breakout of the development cost and program reserves as well as an estimate of the annual costs until development is completed. The policy also weakens NASAs ability to account for some risks in programs consisting of multiple projects, a situation that may affect cost and schedule if risks are unidentified in the estimates. Furthermore, the revised policy will not adequately address several open NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations regarding incomplete and missing cost estimates and the corresponding baseline commitments for programs supporting Artemis missions.
Congress, NASA OIG, and GAO have identified longstanding problems with the completeness and credibility of NASA’s life-cycle cost estimates for major acquisitions. Ultimately, NASA is not providing full visibility into its investments as it begins a multi-decade initiative to transport humans to Mars at a cost that could easily reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Because the programs that support these exploration missions are still in their early development stages, it is critical that NASA establish credible and complete cost and schedule estimates.”
This is a systemic issue at NASA, going back decades. There are tremendous capabilities to plan and estimate, but at senior levels in many large programs there is deliberately no connection made between requirements and costs. I was told by a senior exploration manager in the late 1990s that it was “impossible to design to cost”. You just design what you think best and “it costs what it costs”.
My belief is that this aversion to treating cost as a design variable goes back to the exploration studies of the 1980s, when 40-year integrated “sand charts” of costs for the space station, Moon outpost and Mars missions ended up showing total costs of roughly $400B or so (as I recall, its been a long while since I looked at the numbers). The big number was then attacked in Congress and the SEI (space exploration iniative) program killed. The wrong lesson was learned: “don’t ever talk about costs” was learned, as opposed to the right lesson, which would have been: “finish one big development (Space Station), before you try to start another one (human Moon to Mars)”.
I had offered some thoughts regarding such big-program proposal outcomes (SEI wasn’t the first…or last) in my elaboration on and defense of the original Gateway premise over on TSR a few weeks ago.
https://www.thespacereview….
I suspect that one of the reasons Gateway is almost always touted as a MINI-something (which the artwork almost universally supports) stems at least in part from an administrative aversion to any reminders of the SEI episode you describe.
Cheers!
Another well written report that took 18 months to complete to result in the same story, more recommendations not agreed to, meaning more time spent on “further discussions with the Agency” and more actions never being implemented. OIG says NASA does not follow Title 51 but then gives recommendations that allow NASA to do something different (“should NASA elect”), so I guess NASA IS following Title 51, or OIG can’t make up their mind. Where is “activity” defined in 51? It’s not. When 51 talks programs, projects, and activities, does OIG really believe ‘activities’ means missions or that ‘activities’ means the aggregation (ie, “collectively”) of programs and/or projects? Sounds like just a disagreement between agency and OIG, and OIG wants to impose its arbitrary desire for NASA to report by mission but says (sort of) it’s noncompliant.
These damning reports come out on a regular basis for SLS, Orion and other projects yet nothing seems to change. 15 years of mismanagement, cost over runs and schedule slips covered in times of OIG reports but have any heads rolled? Has the culture improved? Is there really any incentive at NASA to be better project managers? Pretty sad state to see these reports and audits fall on deaf ears.
Exactly. Congress doesn’t care. Keep the voters’ pay flowing.
Old, repetitive, “we didn’t learn the lessons of our previous mistakes, because we are NASA, and we live off the history of Apollo”.
Kill SLS. Now.
don’t people use apostrophes any more … “Agencys” ?
should be “Agency’s”. The former even gets the red squiggly line of grammar/spell check.