NASA finally acknowledges the elephant in the room with the SLS rocket

"You know, you're right, the flight rate—three years is a long time."

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[compgeek89]

I just hope they cancel this piece of garbage before it kills someone, which is all too likely, given the constant excuses for things they could easily have tested and fixed in the past 4 years (what did they spend he last $12B on?).

I can hear the excuses already after the tragedy that "space is hard" and "our simulations didn't show that behavior", etc. all of which is true, but hides the fact that the problems are occuring because it is a tragically flawed rocket with a tragically flawed team building it and should just be put out of its misery.

Fingers crossed that it either goes boom before people get on board or somehow makes it through the few flights through sheer dumb luck.

 

[compgeek89]

Unfortunately, that's exactly the argument that Cruz is using to continue Block 1B development.

Hopefully, when/if Starship starts refueling successfully, his tune will change. There is a case to be made that killing SLS before something has been proven to be able to take over its mission would take an unnecessary risk.¹ But F9/D2 + even a rudimentary HLS Starship (it needs the crew module to work, but it doesn't even need to land!) is a complete replacement for its part of the Artemis conops. That's something that could be proven out this year.

We've already flushed a nice chunk of change down the toilet for FY26 EUS and ML2 development. But the FY27-28-29-30 out-year money has only been obligated. That's nothing a nice rescission can't fix.


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¹We'll leave aside the fact that SLS/Orion has nothing to do without an HLS, and Starship is required to do that.

If there was any hope that sanity would prevail, this program would have been cancelled the moment falcon heavy made orbit. But, with a cheap heavy lift vehicle ready to fly at a moments notice (relatively), we've just kept on shoveling money into this terrible project, and even pre-booked future rockets to keep the sunk cost fallacy alive into the future.

Cant we just hand stacks of hundred dollar bills to the good people of Alabama and end this mafia shakedown? Save us all the ridiculous pretend useless "deliverables"?