NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable::“At current cost levels the SLS program is unsustainable.”
Was Saturn V affordable?
Because maybe the question isn’t whether it’s affordable but whether we are budgeting enough money.
Maybe if we gave a little less to SpaceX, NASA could afford to do more.
Can I ask: do you actually believe NASA builds their own rockets themselves? Like out back in their shed with a table saw and pliers?
The prime contractor on the sls is boeing.
It’s just hate for musk, people who hate musk have blinders on and think every company he has any input into is a scam.
Not a scam, but a tool to help enemies of the democracy.
SpaceX is a tool that directly aids democracy. Without it, we still wouldn’t have independent access to space. We would be relying on the Russian Soyuz to carry us to the ISS, and due to the current situation, I don’t think they’d have let us continue riding the Soyuz if we didn’t have our own method.
SpaceX is getting 2-3 bn dollars for Starship HLS development, most of the funding is coming from SpaceX itself. SLS costs up to 4 bn per flight. I’m not even going to mention the insane cost-overruns and years of delays associated with NASA’s cost-plus contract with Boeing to build the damn thing.
SLS is a sunk cost fallacy and jobs program.
Even then, commercial launch providers get much further with less money. Sure, if NASA had more budget, they could afford the SLS program. But the commercial launch providers show that they could be more efficient with the money they do have.
If NASA cancelled every single contact they had with SpaceX… they might be able to afford 1/3rd of an SLS launch. Or maybe not, because then they’d have to start paying Russians for rides up to the ISS.
SpaceX is saving NASA boatloads of money. Which Congress is forcing them to waste on SLS.
Even considering that, the SLS is poor value for money. It’s basically a dumber space shuttle that you throw away. It’s a parody of 1970s technology.
We can, and should, do better for that price tag.
That was my immediate thought, it’s space exploration, it’s meant to cost more than is reasonable or affordable, because monetary rationale has never been a factor in it. Even if it did pay out in the long run with inventions and discoveries in the past, it’s never going to make budget sense because exploration and pushing our specie’s boundaries shouldn’t be. It’s a miracle what space agencies are/were able to accomplish with super strict budgets in the past, but in the end there’s only so much you can do by cutting corners and letting the private sector fill the gaps
The entire NASA budget is like 5% of the US military budget. Unaffordable my ass.
People in the middle east won’t bomb themselves you know.
That joke is now 2 years out of date and starting to grow mold
but still relevent
Replace wirh whatever country the US wants to steal resources from. Still valid.
More than 2 I think
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a new report, the federal department charged with analyzing how efficiently US taxpayer dollars are spent, the Government Accountability Office, says NASA lacks transparency on the true costs of its Space Launch System rocket program.
Published on Thursday, the new report (see .pdf) examines the billions of dollars spent by NASA on the development of the massive rocket, which made a successful debut launch in late 2022 with the Artemis I mission.
“Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable,” the new report states.
The report also cites concerns about development costs of future hardware for NASA’s big-ticket rocket program, including the Exploration Upper Stage.
“Some NASA officials told us that changes to Artemis mission dates should not affect the SLS program’s cost estimate,” the report states.
“Other officials noted that the program’s cost estimate would be expected to increase to account for the delay to the Artemis IV mission, which shifted from 2026 to 2028.”
The original article contains 738 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good bot.
I mean, sure, but you also have to remember that the Artemis/SLS program was crafted to be politically expensive to kill, not financially efficient.
I agree that it’s exorbitantly expensive and a comically inefficient use of funding, but congress passed a series of laws on the project mandating that certain components be made in certain areas by certain companies, as a way to give multiple states and constituencies skin in the game. Once SpaceX and reusable rocket tech came onto the stage and started to mature, SLS was always going to be on the path to irrelevance.
