Raptor 1.0 was heading south of $1 million in 2019, with a goal of under $250k.
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SLS - On the Scent of Inevitable Capitulation
- Thread starter Nikxice
- Start date
I pulled the $1Mil number from Berger's article, so I wonder what the correct current cost per Raptor is....
And more on this, as the Office of the Inspector General just completed an audit of NASA's management of the booster and engine budget and schedule bloat.
Report: NASA’s Management of the Space Launch System Booster and Engine Contracts
From an Engadget Article talking about it: "NASA's spending on the Artemis Moon Program is expected to reach $93 billion by 2025, including $23.8 billion already spent on the SLS system through 2022. That sum represents "$6 billion in cost increases and over six years in schedule delays above NASA’s original projections," the report states."
And, in a "no duh" moment: "The Inspector General also blames the use of "cost-plus" contracts that allow suppliers to inflate budgets more easily, instead of fixed-priced contracts. The report recommends that upcoming work be shifted to a fixed-price regime..."
In another shocking development, the sun is expected to rise tomorrow and will be setting later the same day…
mspohr
Well-Known Member
NASA finally admits what everyone already knows: SLS is unaffordable
"At current cost levels the SLS program is unsustainable."
arstechnica.com
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. Surprisingly, as part of the reporting process, NASA officials admitted the rocket was too expensive to support its lunar exploration efforts as part of the Artemis program. "Senior NASA officials told GAO that at current cost levels, the SLS program is unaffordable," the new report states.
The referenced .PDF doc is interesting reading and has this graphic, which speaks to dicussion we had about contract vehicles some time back:
The doc also makes the rather astounding assertion that Berger reiterates:
Crazy for a tax-payer funded public agency...
The doc also makes the rather astounding assertion that Berger reiterates:
Crazy for a tax-payer funded public agency...
The entire document is just ragging on NASA for their accounting practices with respect to cost-plus contracting. GAO is an accounting agency, so that's what they do. Why they haven't been critical of NASA's practices long before this is amazing to me. Perhaps they just didn't have the contrast of fixed-price contracts to use as an example of how to do things properly. Regardless, it's nice to see at least a crack in the wall of cost-plus contracting.
This discussion seems to be based on some kind of notion that SLS and Artemis are designed to accomplish some goal beyond pork barrel spending.
Where did that idea come from?
Where did that idea come from?
John F. Kennedy. This whole thing started out for reasons of national prestige and that continued up through Apollo, then there was a fear of losing the technical skills that applied to military applications, so they needed projects to keep the industry busy. As there were no real goals, they just made up stuff, ensured that plenty of money was going into the industry and carried on like that for decades. At some point the spending became institutionalized and we were left with pork barrel spending.
So it started with prestige, which is a political goal, and it has stayed alive because of other political goals.
Now those political goals are starting to be satisfied by American private spaceflight companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, and that should seal the fate of projects like SLS, Orion and such because they will be superfluous. But politicians may always be looking at the next big political goal of prestige, constituency enrichment or military application. So the goal posts may just move to space stations and moon colonies. Whatever becomes the new currency on the international political market.
I just wish they'd focus on unmanned pork so we can have more telescopes, probes, sample return missions and such. But politicians are people-oriented, so they naturally gravitate to advocating for manned operations.
As I see it, the “new currency” in space these days is competition with the Chinese space program (and by extension, the Chinese government) which has made remarkable gains over the last decade. That is going to drive the the new “space race”. The Russians no longer matter in space.
Yes, of course the logical course of action would be to cancel Artemis and contract with SX and BO to accomplish the Artemis goals at a small fraction of the cost. But the size and inertia of the “old space industrial complex” makes shutting it down very difficult politically. We can only hope.
In the meantime, SX will carry on with its Mars goal regardless, and US government money for the Starship HLS will be useful for hardware development.
So NASA is now peddling propaganda* to kids?
I wonder if the book has a chapter explaining why a single rocket launch costs billions of dollars.
* Think using that word is going overboard? See the definition:
I wonder if the book has a chapter explaining why a single rocket launch costs billions of dollars.
* Think using that word is going overboard? See the definition:
Huh? Where have you been for the last 50 years? NASA has always been doing that. It's how they continue to get funding from Congress.
Max Spaghetti
Member
In terms of $ just to get to the moon again, in isolation, yes.
But I think there is a school of thought that having the entire space industry privatised effectively into the hands of one man is not a great idea. This is an investment into technology outside of SpaceX, and a good boost to the national pride (as per Apollo).
I think that's a false equivalency though.
You replied to @Happydays who said: "I see the SLS as a wasteful project"...
Logical conclusion is not necessarily "Give everything to one company", but rather, "Companies should stop being wasteful, and wasteful projects should stop being given to companies."
Now we can debate the definition of "wasteful"...
That man's name is Xi Jinping. It's something to keep in mind.
Yes, but another conclusion is that SLS should be cancelled because it is so wasteful. Today, that would leave the country with SpaceX. Thus his post. I think it's important to remember that it's not just SpaceX. We have Blue Origin as well, which is probably going to include ULA.
I wouldn't worry too much about SLS. Yes, it's a serious drag on NASA's budget, but they're transitioning away from grand projects like that and are focusing on contracts for services, technology demonstrations, and so on. We wouldn't have SpaceX without that. Perhaps more worrying is whether SLS is keeping talented engineers and technicians from being used elsewhere in the industry.
It is inherent in politicians and bureaucrats that they cannot manage resources well. People who can do that go off to places where their ability to manage resources well is valued and rewarded. So politicians and bureaucrats should be leveraging the organizations where those people end up. In our society, they're businessmen.
In short, the politicians should just be pushing our businessmen in various directions with carrots and sticks, not trying to be businessmen themselves.
I think the problem is that politicians need votes, and those are easily bought with pork. So driving a shrewd businessman to be financially responsible doesn't buy you votes, whereas mandating the use of the 1960's era astro-widget made in your back yard does....
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