Yet Another Report Says NASA Has No Idea What SLS Costs
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?
9 responses to “Yet Another Report Says NASA Has No Idea What SLS Costs”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I think Congress’ goal is to make certain as much money as possible flows from the taxpayers into the pockets of their particular constituents. They could have afforded to do so much more but instead they waste it on this useless rocket and capsule.
NASA started this program 20 years ago. It was made of safe and simple Shuttle leftovers woth a retro capsule. It was going to be carrying people to orbit in 2010. If they’d designed and built it on a reasonable cost and schedule, it might have succeeded. But instead it has outlived its usefulness and has yet to acheive anything.
Well, for now they have a finite life of only 6 or 7 SLS rockets unless a lot more money is spent to manifacture new engines. After 6 flights they will have used up the supply of leftover Shuttle SSMEs.
That’s just plain wrong.
NASA has awarded Aerojet rocketdyne over $3B in contracts to restart production of the RS-25 and produce 24 additional flight engines.
The first RS-25 engine to come out of the new production line was tested earlier this year at Stennis, first flight engines are expected sometime next year.
Shuttle heritage engines will run out on Artemis 4, after that they will be flying with these newly manufactured engines.
Safe, simple, soon! $1 billion was too much for a Shuttle launch. We could only afford 4 a year. Enter Orion/SLS (after 15 years in development). Now it costs $4 billion + each launch. We can afford 1 every 2 or 3 (or is it 4 years). NASA and the US should be ashamed of such ineffective management.
I think you are trying to defend Artemis, Orion, SLS? For 15 years we heard how underfunded this program is. But thanks to reports like this one, we see more than enough money was spent, it was simply that no one was keeping track. Yes, last year we got off a flight, a supreme acheivement given how many years passed with no flight. Maybe next year (but the schedule seems to be slipping to 2025) so maybe after 3 years, they might fly another? Hell, if they can support 4 launches in 12 years, with the old Shuttle engines we wont need new ones engines until 2036 at the current use rate. I’m not sure why NASA and Aerojet are “rushing” to build new engines.
In 2003 not even SLS’s predecesor program, Constellation existed, let alone the SLS program itself.
The exploration mandate that led to Constellation was given to NASA in 2004.
With Ares I the goal was first crewed flight to ISS in 2014.
In 2010 Constellation/Ares was canceled and the SLS program was created in their place in 2011.
At the time of program start the first launch was planned for December 2017, first crewed flight in 2021, not 2010.
Has yet to achieve anything except of course all the stuff they have achieved, like completing development on the initial operating capability, conducting a near flawless first flight of the rocket on an integrated lunar test flight, building several more rockets at the same time, development on EUS etc.
Other than all that they haven’t achieved anything I guess.
You jumped ahead a bit. 2004, the year after Columbia, they talked about what to replace the Shuttle with. Lockheed proposed a winged mini Shuttle. NASA (Administrator) insisted on a larger Apollo capsule because it could be ready in time for Shuttle’s termination in 2010. Later they decided on the Ares 1 SRB derived booster. It couldn’t lift the capsule so they had to redesign. Then Ares 1 could not lift the required upper stage, so they redesigned again. By the time they’d screwed the pooch with all their ass backwards design engineering, then they slipped beyond 2010. But as late as 2009, the Constellation Program Manager and Deputy (who became the JSC Director) testified to Norm Augustine that Orion would be ready in 2011. Sally Ride responded in the same meeting, Augustine Committee analysis showed maybe Orion could be ready in 2017, but 1-2 years later was more likely. In the end that ‘readiness’ flight was in 2022. So NASA missed its own estimate by more than a decade and missed even Sally’s more realistic estimate by 5 years. And NASA finally figured out that launching on an SRB was apparently not going to work. And Ares 5 was a stretch a bit too far. And then they settled on SLS. While watching these shenanigans it became obvious NASA hadn’t a clue what they were doing and nothing they said could be trusted.
Well nothing but an increase in funding will happen before the 2024 election. Too many jobs are linked to SLS.
An operational SX Starship with a R&D cost of $0 Tax dollars, will kill SLS. Especially if it is fully reusable. Every SLS crashing into the Ocean will seem so absurd at that point.