NASA’s Space Launch System, George W.S. Abbey, Baker Institute for Public Policy
“In view of the current availability of a significant number of commercial launch vehicles with proven payload capabilities, as well as the industry’s progress in providing a launch vehicle with significantly greater lift capabilities, the Biden administration should reconsider the need for the SLS during its annual budget review. Its launch costs are much greater than those being quoted for existing rockets, as well as those projected for larger commercial boosters with comparable payload capabilities to the SLS. Affordability must always be considered in view of demanding budgets and in view of the availability and the acceptability of lower-cost alternatives.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

14 replies on “George Abbey: Time To Reconsider The Need For SLS”

  3. 100% on the money (no pun intended). The money saved in launching can be invested in more payloads. We build rockets to launch payloads. The payload should always be the most expensive part of any launch. Not the bloody rocket.

    1. There’s also the problem that NASA, beyond the current intent to do Apollo 11 again, has no defined plan to use SLS and therefore no big payloads in development. Nor, needless to say, any estimates of time and budget that might be required.

  4. The short few pages are well written, simple, sweet and to the point, hitting up front on the too often forgotten SLS shortcoming where a low flight rate inevitably means poor reliability, so poor safety, with no path to improve.

    Well said all.

  5. The big catch is the jobs that would inevitably be lost.

    I’m sure the pharaoh – which ever one it was. Cheops? – only wanted a modest little tomb. Then the contractors got hold of the plans.
    (sigh)

    1. There was a piece of wood recovered from one of the shafts in the queen’s chamber and it was dated and pushes back the age of construction to predynastic times.

          1. Fascinating channel, another time pit for me! Watched the video about Musk’s “aliens tweet” which started a ruckus. I can see it now, somebody will photoshop a SLS shape into some hieroglyphics image, make a YT video, resulting in a whole diatribe about itself. I guess we can use a laugh between our arguments over billions wasted. I wonder if those old Rocketdyne guys probably will cry to see their wonderous engines get splashed just after one use.

  6. $25 billion dollars later… Senators and Congressmen need to be punished… along with Boeing.

  7. Like Peter Gabriel said in ‘In Your Eyes’…So much wasted. Wasted money, a generation of wasted talent, so much wasted time.

  8. I wonder where George has been? As the MSFC Center Director mentioned on 60 minutes the other day, NASA never felt there was a need for SLS and the Senate imposed it on NASA for reasons of maintaining jobs. So the lack of need is nothing new. If NASA can do more by advancing the cause of commercial space, and employ the same or more people, they need to make that case. I think everyone should have learned by now, with Shuttle, with ISS, with Constellation, with SLS and with Orion, the programs move slowly and may never come to fruition and it will wind up costing everyone ten times what it should have cost.

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