NASA's IG Trying to Get Them Focused on Reality

Focused on the Reality of the costs of SLS, that is.  Back in June we talked about a report from NASA's Inspector General Paul Martin saying that the Space Launch System or SLS was too expensive. The thing is, NASA knows this.  Back in '19 NASA put up a Request For Information (RFI) to the industry essentially saying "propose a way to cut the costs of SLS by 50% and we'll use it until 2050."  Judging by never seeing another word about this, one would conclude the response was underwhelming.  Or worse.

As I often point out, it's not that bad, it's worse.  In a new story on Ars Technica about an October 12th report from IG Martin, we learn:

Broadly speaking, NASA's cost-reduction plan is to transfer responsibility for production of the rocket to a new company co-owned by Boeing and Northrop Grumman, which are key contractors for the rocket. This company, "Deep Space Transport," would then build the rockets and sell them to NASA. The space agency has said that this services-based model could reduce the cost of the rocket by as much as 50 percent.

However, in a damning new report, NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, says that is not going to happen. Rather, Martin writes, the cost of building the rocket is actually likely to increase.

Martin continues, "Our analysis shows a single SLS Block 1B will cost at least $2.5 billion to produce—not including Systems Engineering and Integration costs—and NASA’s aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50 percent is highly unrealistic." 

Author Eric Berger goes on to report the $146 million per engine cost for one of the RS-25 engines on the SLS core vehicle isn't much less than what NASA is paying for an entire mission on the Falcon Heavy rocket—$178 million for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.  There are four of those engines on an SLS core, $584 million per launch, so the cost of two engines, half of an SLS, is dramatically more than the Falcon Heavy mission. 

That's not an SLS mission, that's not even a fully built SLS.  That's two engines versus an entire heavy lift mission. 

That's our tax money, of course, what should we do with it?  

The IG report isn't optimistic that NASA's attempts to will save money.  To begin with, 

"Given the enormous costs of the Artemis campaign, it is crucial that NASA achieve some significant measure of its affordability goals," Martin wrote in the new report. "Failure to do so will significantly hinder the sustainability of NASA’s deep space human exploration efforts."

He goes item by item and concludes that costs going down is wishful thinking.  I'll go ahead and say it's delusional; that's my word not IG Martin's word.

The agency has not committed to move to fixed-price contracting and has allowed Boeing to incorporate limited rights data into the design of the core stage. In other words, no one else can build the SLS rocket, so if the space agency wants to continue to buy them, it must do so from Boeing and Northrop.

Historically, NASA faced a similar problem with Space Shuttles.  

In the mid-1990s NASA transferred the Space Shuttle production from agency management to a commercial services contract, citing the goal of saving money. Boeing and Lockheed Martin created a new company, United Space Alliance, to provide Shuttle services on a sole-source basis to NASA, like what will be done with the SLS rocket.

Did costs go down?  Nope.  In review, IG Martin says Space Shuttle operations costs increased approximately 38%  

The only possibility on the horizon that might result in lowering prices is shifting to private vehicles.  

"The Agency may soon have more affordable commercial options to carry humans to the Moon and beyond," the report states. "In our judgment, the Agency should continue to monitor the commercial development of heavy-lift space flight systems and begin discussions of whether it makes financial and strategic sense to consider these options as part of the Agency’s longer-term plans to support its ambitious space exploration goals."

The problem there is political, and all government agencies like NASA are political bodies, above all else.  SLS was entirely political, a Congressionally-mandated way to ensure jobs continued after the shuttle program was shuttered.  Not to mention that current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was one of the senators who pushed the program through in 2010.  Despite the hard numbers showing NASA's move toward commercial space and fixed price contracts saved money, there are those in NASA and congress that argue for the cost-plus contracts of SLS and most other big programs. 

It just seems to me that cost-plus contracts should be used for things that have never been done before, and a "new" rocket like SLS doesn't fit that.  Especially since something like the $146 million RS-25, the Space Shuttle Main Engines, is as close to total reuse as one can get.  Those should be firm, fixed-price contracts at a price commensurate with their cost to the shuttle program the last time they were bought, with some adjustment for inflation, obsolete parts and other necessities.  Otherwise, cost-plus contracts seem to simply be a way to grease the skids for money flowing around and ending up in politicians' pockets.