Audit Calls NASA's Goal To Reduce Artemis Rocket Costs 'Highly Unrealistic,' Threat To Deep Space Exploration (phys.org) 50
Richard Tribou reports via Phys.Org: NASA's goal to reduce the costs of the powerful Space Launch System rocket for its Artemis program by 50% was called "highly unrealistic" and a threat to its deep space exploration plans, according to a report by NASA's Office of the Inspector General released (PDF) on Thursday. The audit says the costs to produce one SLS rocket through its proposed fixed-cost contract will still top $2.5 billion, even though NASA thinks it can shrink that through "workforce reductions, manufacturing and contracting efficiencies, and expanding the SLS's user base."
"Given the enormous costs of the Artemis campaign, failure to achieve substantial savings will significantly hinder the sustainability of NASA's deep space human exploration efforts," the report warns. The audit looked at NASA's plans to shift from its current setup among multiple suppliers for the hardware to a sole-sourced services contract that would include the production, systems integration and launch of at least five SLS flights beginning with Artemis V currently slated for as early as 2029. NASA's claim it could get those costs to $1.25 billion per rocket was taken to task by the audit.
"NASA's aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50% is highly unrealistic. Specifically, our review determined that cost saving initiatives in several SLS production contracts were not significant," the audit reads. It does find that rocket costs could approach $2 billion through the first 10 SLS rockets under the new contract, a reduction of 20%. [...] Through 2025, the audit stated its Artemis missions will have topped $93 billion, which includes billions more than originally announced in 2012 as years of delays and cost increases plagued the leadup to Artemis I. The SLS rocket represents 26% of that cost to the tune of $23.8 billion. The inspector general makes several recommendations to NASA. The most striking of which is that NASA consider using commercial heavy-lift rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy or Blue Origin's New Glenn, as an alternative to the SLS rocket for future Artemis missions.
"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," the audit reads. "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."
"Given the enormous costs of the Artemis campaign, failure to achieve substantial savings will significantly hinder the sustainability of NASA's deep space human exploration efforts," the report warns. The audit looked at NASA's plans to shift from its current setup among multiple suppliers for the hardware to a sole-sourced services contract that would include the production, systems integration and launch of at least five SLS flights beginning with Artemis V currently slated for as early as 2029. NASA's claim it could get those costs to $1.25 billion per rocket was taken to task by the audit.
"NASA's aspirational goal to achieve a cost savings of 50% is highly unrealistic. Specifically, our review determined that cost saving initiatives in several SLS production contracts were not significant," the audit reads. It does find that rocket costs could approach $2 billion through the first 10 SLS rockets under the new contract, a reduction of 20%. [...] Through 2025, the audit stated its Artemis missions will have topped $93 billion, which includes billions more than originally announced in 2012 as years of delays and cost increases plagued the leadup to Artemis I. The SLS rocket represents 26% of that cost to the tune of $23.8 billion. The inspector general makes several recommendations to NASA. The most striking of which is that NASA consider using commercial heavy-lift rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy or Blue Origin's New Glenn, as an alternative to the SLS rocket for future Artemis missions.
"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," the audit reads. "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."
And "automation", I bet (Score:4, Informative)
That's the big thing our C-Goofballs currently dream of.
Hey, idiots! We're engineers. We're fucking lazy and we hate routine tasks. If something can be automated, we did it long before you even knew that the task existed!
Re: And "automation", I bet (Score:3)
To be fair, there absolutely are things in NASAâ(TM)s design process that result in lack of automation. The problem is that to find that automation you need to redesign the whole rocket. The Space shuttle used thousands of individually shaped heat protection tiles because they had to wrap over very complex geometry. They had the very complex geometry because they optimised the shape very carefully to be the best they could to get through the atmosphere and land. If someone high enough up in managem
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Not all engineers think in such terms. I'm dealing regularly with engineers who use lengthy runbooks, rather than scripting operations, because the runbooks can be handed to an off-shore call center today rather than requiring any code review or approval process, and having an off-shore team increases the head-count for middle managers who'd have to sign off on automation changes.
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Translation: your business process actively supresses innovation.
Not to single you out, I see this all the time. People don't like change. Throw up enough road blocks to innovation and you get more of the same.
I don't know your business but I'd be willing to bet that producing the lengthy runbooks is already automated.
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I work with different companies on different projects, as do my colleagues. Runbook generation is never automated. It is always a manual process, usually recorded by partially trained personnel to capture instructions they do not understand but have been instructed to perform. My colleagues are occasionally hired to replace the pile of runbooks with automation, which does require attention and understanding of the available options.
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Any engineer worth his weight would have reported this middle-management practice to the higher ups to ensure a better use of funds than to create another petty dictator fiefdom.
NASA aiming to cut costs by 50%? (Score:2)
Stop throwing good money after bad (Score:5, Interesting)
The best thing NASA could do, would be to cancel the entire SLS program. Claw back as much money as possible for non-performance. Then start over *without* cost-plus contracts. Simple contract: we'll pay you X per launch. No development money, just per-launch, with a performance bonus and a non-performance penalty.
If the old-space companies can compete, great. Heck, they have a huge leg up, because they have all that experience, plus the SLS development that has already happened. If they cannot compete, they deserve to die.
FWIW, Ariane 6 is having exactly the same problems. The EU is throwing more and more money at the development, so that they can later pay for really expensive launches. It is now clear that the launch costs are not going to be much (if any) cheaper than Ariane 5, so all that development money has basically been wasted.
Re: Stop throwing good money after bad (Score:3)
Will never happen. Not as long as there are powerful congressmen and senators who's political survival is connected to making sure all those people working for the former shuttle (and now SLS) contractors keep their jobs.
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Antiques yes, but per https://www.nasa.gov/reference... [nasa.gov]
"The SLS Program has an inventory of 16 RS-25 flight engines, built by Aerojet Rocketdyne of El Segundo, California, transferred from the Shuttle Program
Re: Stop throwing good money after bad (Score:3)
To be fair, Ariane 5/6 arenâ(TM)t anywhere near as bad as SLS in terms of out of proportion launch costs.
Ariane 5 costs about 150Mâ to launch. Thatâ(TM)s about 2.5 times the cost of rockets with similar capabilities (falcon 9 costs about $60m). SLS is harder to compare since itâ(TM)s a super heavy, and thereâ(TM)s very few other super heavy launchers to compare to. At $2.5b per launch though itâ(TM)s about twice as expensive as its predecessor (the STS). Itâ(TM)s about
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Ariane isn't supposed to be the most cost effective anyway. It's supposed to give the EU a reliable launch capability, independent of other countries. In other words, national security.
Starship will be great if it lives up to Elon Musk's claims, but it undoubtedly won't because he always exaggerates everything. It will certainly be cheaper than SLS, if it works. So far they haven't got to orbit, let alone landing on the Moon, taking off again, and then landing on Earth. They also need to develop a tanker an
Re: Stop throwing good money after bad (Score:3)
As a jobs program, the SLS has been very successful. I doubt that Congress cared if it ever flew. The way the program is structured it looks like its job is to employee people in science, engineering, manufacturing, and administration. The goal could be just to keep these kind of people employed so that we have these skills available in case the country goes to war or has some other crisis
Re:Stop throwing good money after bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Except NASA literally cannot do that. It's not NASA propping up the SLS, it's Congress - a few senators in particular that will not let this pork project die.
NASA is just under explicit orders to administer the program, and as I recall it's suspected that at least one NASA head was fired for being too vocally opposed to it.
If I had to guess, there's a good chance the ambitious cost-cutting plan and subsequent audit is an attempt to shame Congress into letting SLS die.
NASA "does their best to save the Artemis program" - practically the only reason SLS exists at this point, by announcing an SLS cost-saving plan that would still be frankly embarrassingly expensive compared to Starship. Auditors then look it over and say there's no chance they'll be able to get anywhere close to that, and even explicitly suggests commercial options? That sounds like a pretty loud cry of "Take this %$#@! albatross off our necks" to me.
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> It's not NASA propping up the SLS, it's Congress - a few senators in particular that will not let this pork project die.
They all want factories in their backyard. It's reverse NIMBYism.
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In what way do you think the "old space" companies have the experience? The folks who went to the moon are already not just retired, but dead. Instead, the "experience" is with the generation who got participation trophies and got hired with affirmative action. SpaceX already hired all the smart ones. ...Which, btw, appears to be pissing off the Biden DoJ.
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Biden's DoJ wants SpaceX to hire Chinese engineer that does not have proper security clearance (step 1, US citizen or Green Card). I suppose that's one way Biden wants CCP to get SpaceX technology.
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NASA cannot do things Congress have written into funding law. Europa Clipper was initially slated to be launch on SLS by Congress, and NASA found an issue with vibration that would destroy all of the delicate instruments onboard. That was eventually switch over to Falcon Heavy. However, for Artemis, Congress have dictated that movement of human to the moon MUST be carried out on Orion capsule, which is so large and massive that it can only be carry on SLS for a direct Lunar-injection orbit. Also the lea
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The best thing NASA could do, would be to cancel the entire SLS program.
Cancel the Senate Launch System? How would representatives funnel money to the contractors in their districts?
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SLS and Ariane 6 aren't space launch programs. They are jobs programs that happen to also put some things in space and (shh don't tell make several companies very very profitable).
I'm not mad about the jobs, I can't stand the companies making egregious profits, and hey if some shit gets into space...cool.
But that said, SLS and A6 are dead ends unless Starship is somehow a complete and utter failure that needs to be scrapped and re-designed from scratch. Even if the SS per-launch cost is 100x the original
fire at least one person (Score:2)
"...NASA's plans to shift from its current setup among multiple suppliers for the hardware to a sole-sourced services ..."
Yes because single-sourcing is a long-proven way to CUT costs in government contracting.
Whoever included that line in whatever NASA justification it was written in should be fired, instantly.
NASA does some astonishing science, and continues to deliver missions and results that other countries' space programs can only dream of. How we square that with having a likewise astonishingly inco
Oh no (Score:2)
Well, duh.
Throwing good money after bad (Score:2, Informative)
Sometimes, a project goes off the rails so badly you just have to scrap it, lessons learned, salvage what you can for the future and start over.
Some things have gone so far down the wrong path, the expense of "fixing" them to get a sub optimal result is higher than just starting over.
This is true with any project of any size from a backyard bird house to a giant rocket.
But the same people who have to make those tough calls are usually the same people with a vested interest in continuing to avoid embarrassme
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Lmao, can you at least post that on a thread where we are discussing Hamas slaughtering unarmed civilians instead of a NASA article?
Are you still butt hurt how badly I schooled you few days ago re: your terrorist pals' heroic rape and mass murder at a peace and love music festival?
Yeah, they sure stood up for Justice and Freedom with that move!
Thanks for playing!
Free Billion$$$$ to Boeing and Northrup (Score:1)
> "Although the SLS is the only launch vehicle currently available
The SLS is not currently available, has never been available, isn't fiscally viable, and is
nothing more than a plot to give Boeing and Northrup HUGE BIGGLY CHUNKS OF CASH.
It used RS-25s (space shuttle engines from 50 years ago) to fly once in 2016, hasn't flown
again, never will fly again, has no engines, and is just a vehicle to deliver money from US
taxpayers to Boeing and Northrup.
It would be funny if it was a joke, but it's not.
SLS launch (Score:2)
So far SLS has launched once on 16 November 2022 it was uncrewed and successful.
Next SLS launch is scheduled for November 2024.
I do not know what you are thinking of regarding 2016.
I think it is a boondoggle but it is false to state that it has never been available.
Starship! (Score:1)
I see - a functioning rocket abandoned for a design that has never reached orbit, and won't respond to rocketry 101 - Terminating the flight when the Flight Termination system is activated.
Even if not that, the N1 Soviet many engine concept has never reached orbit, despite being around since the 1960's
Maybe Starship will fly eventually, but seems a bit premature to declare it the path forward. Has the auditor considered Switching over to
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I mean, it'll get modded down exactly because it's dumb. It's less than a year since SLS launched for the first time. There's exactly one of that type of rocket that's ever launched. The advantage you're trying to big up in terms of SLS being a known quantity is in reality, near enough to non existant. What do you mean "the Soviet many engine concept has never reached orbit"? Falcon Heavy has launched a 100% launch record, and *many* more times than SLS has.
We have two rocket designs, both very very ea
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I mean, it'll get modded down exactly because it's dumb.
I've made a career out of saying things that people have called dumb. But here's the thing. I'll tell you what is dumb:
The initial Starship launch was as hurried as a 1960's communist party demand for a May Day launch. My reasoning?
The launch pad tor the most powerful rocket was closer to a Mercury level launchpad than to a most powerful rocket ever launched launchpad. Where were the rainbirds, where were the extra long flame trenches? A lot of physics, from energy dissipation to sonic excursions that
Re: Starship! (Score:2)
Your analysis of the issues with flight 1 seem mostly correct, but beside the point. It doesnâ(TM)t matter that the first launch was rushed. It doesnâ(TM)t matter that development is a bit haphazard in places. The result of a more haphazard development process is a cheeper product. A product that most observers agree, will work correctly in the end (and probably sooner rather than later). We saw the same thing with Falcon 9â(TM)s landings. Early trials were a disaster, often for dumb re
Re: Starship! (Score:2)
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SLS also still has had only one testflight, and now they have to build a completely new rocket. And Starship also had one testflight which succeeded its goal, getting past the tower. The termination system did go off at the right time, problem was, Starship was too sturdy for the explosives, and finally exploded due to the rocket braking up. System fixed and on to the next test flight. Starship will be much more reliable as SLS will ever be, and at a fraction of the cost,with even capable of lifting up a much larger cargo as SLS can. Hopefully by the end of the month Starship will have its next test flight. SpaceX has a very good track record with its Falcon rockets, so once Starship is ready it will be the workhorse.
So your argument is the hot hand - Falcons are good rockets, so Spacex is assured of unending success. Got it.
Falcons are good rockets. I for one, won't declare that Starship a success until it launches, orbits, and lands in one piece. Then gets reduced to practice. I take it you believe that will happen in a week or two? That's the difference between you and me, my friend. I deal in facts, you deal in belief in Elon,
Re: Starship! (Score:2)
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Predictable (Score:3)
NASA is an outdated corrupt bureaucracy (Score:2)
It's outlived its usefulness and is now completely corrupt and ineffective. It should be disbanded or downsized. Just like the over-bloated military and the police.
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Defund everything!
Once-great NASA.. (Score:3)
.. has turned into a jobs program for career bureaucrats and a political tool to keep workers in selected congressional districts employed
They have lost their focus, or maybe it was taken from them by congress
They need to cancel the SLS, fire all of the bureaucrats who thought it was a good idea, and concentrate on science and research
So the right people got paid! (Score:1)
Reminds me of the STS (Score:2)
"workforce reductions, manufacturing and contracting efficiencies, and expanding the SLS's user base."
NASA pitched STS claiming costs would be offset by launching satellites and monthly launches would keep cost per launch down. Neither actually happened.
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One word (Score:2)
Pork
NASA needs to get out of rocket building... (Score:2)
What do they not get about the so very obvious: (Score:2)
?