New report finds NASA awarded Boeing large fees despite SLS launch slips
Source: Ars Technica
SLS WOES —
New report finds NASA awarded Boeing large fees despite SLS launch slips
"It would be misleading for us to continue to report the June 2020 launch date."
ERIC BERGER - 6/19/2019, 11:06 AM
As NASA talks up its Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon by the year 2024, a new report from the US Government Accountability Office raises questions about the space agency's ability to build the spacecraft and rockets intended to carry out that mission.
Instead of launching in 2020, the Artemis-1 mission that will see a Space Launch System rocket boost an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon will instead launch as late as June 2021, the GAO report finds. NASA also appears to have been obscuring the true cost of its development programs, particularly with the large SLS rocket, which has Boeing as its prime contractor.
"While NASA acknowledges about $1 billion in cost growth for the SLS program, it is understated," the report found. "This is because NASA shifted some planned SLS scope to future missions but did not reduce the program’s cost baseline accordingly. When GAO reduced the baseline to account for the reduced scope, the cost growth is about $1.8 billion."
NASA now estimates that it will spend about $10 billion to develop the rocket and associated ground systems at Kennedy Space Center, where the vehicle will launch from. This figure assumes the vehicle does not encounter additional technical problems during the test and qualification phase of the hardware—which is where such problems typically arise.
NASA originally had planned to launch the SLS rocket in 2017 but has since pushed that date back multiple times. The agency's current administrator, Jim Bridenstine, has said NASA is looking at all options to keep the rocket's inaugural launch within calendar year 2020.
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Read more: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/new-report-finds-nasa-awarded-boeing-large-fees-despite-sls-launch-slips/
