Keith’s note: According to a Blue origin posting: “New Glenn successfully completed an integrated launch vehicle hotfire test today, the final major milestone on our road to first flight. NG-1 will carry a Blue Ring Pathfinder as its first manifested payload and will launch from Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral, FL.” Social media postings (as yet unconfirmed) cite a 6 January 2025 launch date target (again, unconfirmed). Soon NASA’s SLS will have two immense rockets that can out-compete it in terms of cost, performance, flight rate, and ability to be adapted and revised. And these rockets were built from scratch using 21st century experience and concepts – not a congressionally-mandated shotgun marriage of 1970s, 1980s, and early 2000’s ideas and rocket parts. Stay tuned.

2024 Report on NASA’s Top Management and Performance Challenges Full report. Excerpts:

• NASA has requested additional funding for Artemis systems through FY 2029, with the Artemis V mission delayed until 2030. At the same time, the lack of a comprehensive cost estimate for the Artemis campaign means that Congress and other stakeholders lack the level of transparency and insight needed about the long-term cost, feasibility, and sustainability of the effort.
• NASA expects to continue operations and maintenance of the Station through 2030. However, as the Agency delays the retirement of the ISS farther into the future, a variety of long-standing challenges will continue to intensify. These include maintaining and upgrading the Station, managing cargo and crew transportation constraints, and solidifying a transition and controlled deorbit plan.
• We also continue to identify funding instability as an impediment to NASA’s project management success. Unstable or uncertain funding, whether in terms of the total amount of funds dedicated to a project or the timing of when those funds are disbursed to the project, can result in inefficient management practices that contribute to poor cost, schedule, and performance outcomes. Protecting Ocean Worlds: Europa Clipper Planetary Protection Inputs To A Probabilistic Risk-based Approach
• Though the volume of interest in private astronaut missions has exceeded NASA’s expectations, significant demand for commercial activity in other sectors—such as in-space manufacturing and marketing products for sale on Earth—has yet to materialize. It is too early to determine the extent to which private astronaut missions will help facilitate a commercial market in LEO.
• At the end of 2023, approximately 64 percent of NASA employees worked in science and engineering occupations, yet the Agency remains at risk from a shortage of such staff due to increased competition for talent from the growing commercial space industry. NASA’s STEM engagement efforts have faced significant challenges over the past two decades including shifting administration priorities and declining budgets.
• much of NASA’s current infrastructure dates to the Apollo-era of space exploration and is in marginal to poor condition. As of July 2024, more than 83 percent of NASA’s facilities are beyond their original design life.
• Another area that we identified is NASA’s management of its cost-plus contracts for development efforts such as the SLS, Orion, and ML-2. These programs have experienced years of delays and billions of dollars in cost increases, due in part to payment of overly generous award fees that we have found to be inconsistent with contractor performance. Award- fee contracts are designed to incentivize contractors and reward strong performance, and these fees are in addition to the amounts paid to reimburse them for actual costs incurred.

Keith’s note: this editorial by Mike Bloomberg “NASA’s $100 Billion Moon Mission Is Going Nowhere“ certainly does not mince words. “A celestial irony is that none of this is necessary. A reusable SpaceX Starship will very likely be able to carry cargo and robots directly to the moon – no SLS, Orion, Gateway, Block 1B or ML-2 required – at a small fraction of the cost. Its successful landing of the Starship booster was a breakthrough that demonstrated how far beyond NASA it is moving.Meanwhile, NASA is canceling or postponing promising scientific programs – including the Veritas mission to Venus; the Viper lunar rover; and the NEO Surveyor telescope, intended to scan the solar system for hazardous asteroids – as Artemis consumes ever more of its budget. Taxpayers and Congress should be asking: What on Earth are we doing? And the next president should be held accountable for answers.”

“The program has made progress, but the Artemis schedule poses challenges. Artemis II and III launches (planned for September 2025 and 2026, respectively): EGS is making progress refurbishing the Mobile Launcher 1 – the structure used to transport and launch key systems – and modifying elements to support crew during these missions. New capabilities are taking longer than planned, and the program has only limited time to address potential issues. Artemis IV launch (planned for September 2028): EGS has made some progress toward this mission, such as modifying facilities to accommodate processing and launching the larger Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1B launch vehicle. However, much work remains, some of which cannot start until after the Artemis III launch.” Full report NASA Artemis Missions: Exploration Ground Systems Program Could Strengthen Schedule Decisions

Keith’s note: According to the new NASA OIG Report “NASA’s Transition of the Space Launch System to a Commercial Services Contract“ … “NASA’s ability to reduce SLS costs and negotiate a fixed-price contract with DST will be impeded by a lack of competition for heavy-lift launch services, a characteristic that historically has helped drive down costs. Further, NASA has permitted current SLS contractors to incorporate limited rights data into the design of the core stage and Exploration Upper Stage, effectively blocking other contractors from competing to build the SLS system. That said, inclusion of several Federal Acquisition Regulation provisions in EPOC such as incentive fees may assist NASA in contract negotiations, mitigate the impact to schedule and cost overruns, and ensure remaining data rights are retained to the fullest extent possible by the government. Finally, while DST intends to reduce costs by increasing economies of scale by building more SLSs, its efforts to find customers outside of NASA have been unsuccessful to date. Although the SLS is the only launch vehicle currently available that meets Artemis mission needs, in the next 3 to 5 years other human-rated commercial alternatives that are lighter, cheaper, and reusable may become available. Therefore, NASA may want to consider whether other commercial options should be a part of its mid- to long-term plans to support its ambitious space exploration goals.”

Keith’s note: According to a GAO report issued today: “Space Launch System: Cost Transparency Needed to Monitor Program Affordability“: “Because the original SLS version’s cost and schedule commitments, or baselines, were tied to the launch of Artemis I, ongoing production and other costs needed to sustain the program going forward are not monitored. Instead, NASA created a rolling 5-year estimate of production and operations costs to ensure that the costs fit within NASA’s overall budget. However, neither the estimate nor the annual budget request track costs by Artemis mission or for recurring production items. As a result, the 5-year estimate and the budget requests are poor measures of cost performance over time. In 2014, GAO recommended that NASA develop a cost baseline that captures production costs for the missions beyond Artemis I that fly SLS Block I. NASA intends to fly SLS Block I for Artemis II, planned for 2024, and Artemis III, planned for 2025. NASA partially concurred, but has not yet implemented this recommendation. A cost baseline would increase the transparency of ongoing costs associated with SLS production and provide necessary insights to monitor program affordability.” Here are More posts in the continuing saga of what SLS actually costs. As if NASA will ever actually know who much these things cost. Why start now?

Keith’s note: According to a new NASA OIG Report “NASA’s Management of the Space Launch System Booster and Engine Contracts“: “… the complexity of developing, updating, and integrating new systems along with heritage components proved to be much greater than anticipated, resulting in the completion of only 5 of 16 engines under the Adaptation contract and added scope and cost increases to the Boosters contract. … Additionally, Marshall Space Flight Center procurement officials who oversee all four contracts are challenged by inadequate staff, their lack of experience, and limited opportunities to review contract documentation. … Marshall procurement officials also encountered significant issues with the award of BPOC, the follow-on booster contract, which started as an undefinitized letter contract in which terms, specifications, and price were not agreed upon before performance began. We found NASA took 499 days to definitize the letter contract, which is far outside the 180-day federal guidance. … As a result, we question $19.8 million in award fees it received for the 11 unfinished engines which were subsequently moved to the RS-25 Restart and Production contract and may now be eligible to receive additional award fees. … Faced with continuing cost and schedule increases, NASA is undertaking efforts to make the SLS more affordable. Under the RS-25 Restart and Production contract, NASA and Aerojet Rocketdyne are projecting manufacturing cost savings of 30 percent per engine starting with production of the seventh of 24 new engines. However, those savings do not capture overhead and other costs, which we currently estimate at $2.3 billion. Moreover, NASA currently cannot track per-engine costs to assess whether they are meeting these projected saving targets.”

Keith’s note: SpaceX just conducted a full duration static test firing of 31 Raptor engines (1 shutdown, 1 was shut down) on Starship producing enough thrust to still reach orbit – the most powerful rocket humans have ever built or fired. Sorry SLS. Video below.

From: Whitmeyer, Tom (HQ-BE000)
Date: Wednesday, Nov 16, 2022, 2:54 PM
To:
Subject: Congratulations

Keith’s note: According to NASA PAO: “NASA confirmed it remains on track for the launch of the Artemis I Moon mission during a two-hour launch window that opens at 1:04 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 16. The launch countdown will begin at 1:24 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 14.” More.

Keith’s note: You have to read this solicitation to believe it. To build SLS NASA used existing Shuttle hardware to save money and then went off and reinvented everything that was “off the shelf” – making reusable SSMEs disposable, putting pieces together in new ways on Powerpoint, etc. Then they spent years and wasted billions of dollars to put it all together and tried to make it work. It is still sitting on the ground. Now NASA says that DST – Deep Space Transport – aka BoeingNorthropGrumman is the only company that is qualified to operate it. Well, DUH. NASA designed the whole SLS thing to be a one-off space system that no one in their right mind would build, much less want to operate. Can anyone operate it more cheaply? Of course not. Who’d even want to try? Just send money.

Years late, billions over budget, and after multiple paint jobs, #NASA says that the latest notional 2022 launch dates for #Artemis 1 are 29 Aug, 2 Sep, and 5 Sep #CaveatEmptor pic.twitter.com/R7AzJM3DTc — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) July 20, 2022

NASA GAO Report: NASA’s Compliance with the Payment Integrity Information Act for Fiscal Year 2021 “We found that NASA was not in compliance with PIIA for FY 2021 because it did not publish improper payment estimates for the Space Launch Sy stem (SLS) program in the accompanying materials to the AFR as required by the statute. In our FY 2019 improper payment compliance audit, we reported that NASA failed to […]

Keith’s note: With the exception of an unresolved Hydrogen leak NASA told computers to ignore, it seems that the countdown to T-29 sec otherwise went as planned. The original plan was to bring it down to T-9.3 sec but was halted when a flag was encountered – so the test was not 100% completed. But NASA will try and spin it as if it was. So apparently the only way […]

NASA to Discuss Status of Artemis I Moon Mission “Due to upgrades required at an off-site supplier of gaseous nitrogen used for the test, NASA will take advantage of the opportunity to roll SLS and Orion back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to replace a faulty upper stage check valve and a small leak on the tail service mast umbilical. During that time, the agency also will review schedules and […]

Artemis I WDR Update: Third Test Attempt Concluded, NASA “Teams concluded today’s wet dress rehearsal test at approximately 5:10 p.m. EDT after observing a liquid hydrogen (LH2) leak on the tail service mast umbilical, which is located at the base of the mobile launcher and connects to the rocket’s core stage. The leak was discovered during liquid hydrogen loading operations and prevented the team from completing the test. Before ending […]

Always available for training in transparency to the news media. Here I am staying late after a press conference to explain our problems in depth as long as the media had questions. pic.twitter.com/wejfN5sIyR — Wayne Hale (@waynehale) April 12, 2022

When asked what tests will not be done @NASA says "We will be missing loading operations for the upper stage itself". Ah, so only half of the rocket – the part with the crew capsule on top – will not be fully tested before launch. No problem apparently at #NASA pic.twitter.com/becglWu9Jv — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) April 11, 2022 "The whole point of wet press is to decrease risk" says the […]

Artemis I Wet Dress Rehearsal Update “NASA is planning to proceed with a modified wet dress rehearsal, primarily focused on tanking the core stage, and minimal propellant operations on the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) with the ground systems at Kennedy. Due to the changes in loading procedures required for the modified test, wet dress rehearsal testing is slated to resume with call to stations on Tuesday, April 12 and […]