The biggest space news of the last few days is a report out of Boeing that they're preparing for NASA to terminate the Space Launch System or SLS program.
On Friday, with less than an hour's notice, David Dutcher, Boeing's vice president and program manager for the SLS rocket, scheduled an all-hands meeting for the approximately 800 employees working on the program. The apparently scripted meeting lasted just six minutes, and Dutcher didn't take questions.
During his remarks, Dutcher said Boeing's contracts for the rocket could end in March and that the company was preparing for layoffs in case the contracts with the space agency were not renewed. "Cold and scripted" is how one person described Dutcher's demeanor.
With Trump's pick for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, not having been approved by congress, all that can be said is that Boeing seems to be preparing for a worst case outcome. There have been reports that the future of the entire Artemis program and ways to complete its goal to return Americans to the moon are being reviewed (in the often-quoted line of “...landing the first woman and first person of color...” or even the milder “first woman and the next man”).
Multiple sources said there has been a healthy debate within the White House and senior leadership at NASA, including acting administrator Janet Petro, about the future of the SLS rocket and the Artemis Moon program. Some commercial space advocates have been pressing hard to cancel the rocket outright. Petro has been urging the White House to allow NASA to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions using the initial version of the SLS rocket before the program is canceled.
Others have pointed out that the problem with the SLS has been the program was incentivized to be late and over-budget, and that keeping the program alive embodies the sunk cost fallacy so the smart thing to do is just drop it and cut the losses. These critics point out that keeping the SLS around to make the first lunar landing could actually make things worse, arguing that large contractors (that is, Boeing) would be incentivized to slow down work and drag out their cost-plus contracts for as long as possible.
On Saturday, a day after this story was published, NASA released a statement saying the SLS rocket remains an "essential component" of the Artemis campaign. "NASA and its industry partners continuously work together to evaluate and align budget, resources, contractor performance, and schedules to execute mission requirements efficiently, safely, and successfully in support of NASA’s Moon to Mars goals and objectives," a spokesperson said. "NASA defers to its industry contractors for more information regarding their workforces.
It's shocking how much the industry has changed since the SLS began. As
we've talked about before, NASA was directed by congress to start the program
in 2011. The joke that SLS stands for the “Shuttles' Leftover Shit”
comes from the fact that the rocket is largely built from components of the
space shuttle, including the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) and
side-mounted boosters. Calling them SSMEs isn't just a name; the only SLS
mission to fly used SSMEs that were actually flown on
shuttle missions. The SLS rocket was initially supposed to launch by the
end of 2016. It did not make its debut flight until the end of 2022.
NASA has spent approximately $3 billion a year developing the rocket and its ground systems over the program's lifetime. While handing out guaranteed contracts to Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Aerojet, and other contractors, the government's rocket-building enterprise has been superseded by the private industry. SpaceX has developed two heavy lift rockets in the last decade, and Blue Origin just launched its own, with the New Glenn booster. Each of these rockets is at least partially reusable and flies at less than one-tenth the cost of the SLS rocket.
My view of this is the only reason to keep the SLS is if it has an insurmountable
lead over SpaceX and a bigger lead over Blue Origin. I have to wonder if
Artemis keeps going with SLS and the Starship-based Human Landing System can
they land astronauts on the moon before the Chinese do? Is there any way
to get a replacement for the SLS-based system in time for it to make a
difference?
The first Space Launch System rocket rolls toward its launch pad, LC-39B. This image is dated 3/17/22; it would be another eight months before it would fly - November of '22 Credit: Trevor Mahlmann
Junk it. ALL of it. Old Space is dead.....get out of our way.
ReplyDeleteSLS is... well, basically useless. For the price of one SLS launch you can easily launch 15 Falcon Heavy launches. Which is roughly 12 times the mass lifted to LEO.
ReplyDeleteAnd Orion is screwed, too. It looks like a crewed reusable Starship will be available way before a safe version of Orion is ready to fly.
Starliner's dead, oh so dead.
If'n I was NASA Administrator, this is what I'd do: Accept the cost losses and cut SLS out. Rent the VAB to SpaceX to build Starships. Allow more launch complexes to be built. Become a lean, mean, administrative machine and focus on what NASA should be focused on, research and pushing the cutting edge of aerospace. Which does not mean being a jobs program.