by panick21 | 2026-02-28 02:52:24+00:00
The SLS and Orion project have been so incredibly deeply flawed from the start. Its a huge mistake that they exists. The were bad designs to begin with and they are badly executed.

Constellation was a bad program by Bush Jr that was aimed at the moon, it would have been 4 expensive project, a human rocket, a big cargo rocket, a earth-moon capsule and a big new moon lander. Most of it Shuttle based, because everybody knew Shuttle was going to die, but they wanted to keep the workforce. Of these the human rocket was one of the dumbest human rocket designs ever, and it was so absurdly hilariously over-budget that the program basically had to kill itself. Orion was being worked on but was also over-budget and behind. The never even got to the big rocket or the moon lander.

Obama and his space team had some better idea, namely using commercial rockets and new contracting structures. You only need normal commercial rocket if you simply invest in distributed launch. Any analysis shows that this was going to be cheaper but NASA was never allowed to explore that. So they wanted to cancel the incredibly expensive badly designed Constellation program and did so. But Congress, Republicans and Democrats lead by later NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Alabama-man Richard Shelby wouldn't let it happen, they saved Orion by giving it a mission it was not suited for and transformed the Ares 1 and Ares 5 rocket from Constellation (the horribly over budget complete shit-shows) into SLS.

The way this happen is funny. NASA did a bunch of analysis on different very big rocket. And NASA analysis was perfectly clear, the cheapest and long term best option would be a RP-1 fueled first stage with big engines. So basically a Saturn V modernized. So basically going away from Shuttle legacy (Of course commercial rockets and distrusted launch would have been even cheaper, but they were not allowed to investigate that). Commercial companies were also never asked for suggestion, despite both SpaceX and ULA offering.

Congress lead by Richard Shelby and friends wouldn't allow that. So they specifically wrote the bill in a way that made it absolutely impossible to do anything other then a Shuttle derived. They wrote in 2010-2011 that the a rocket with 70t to LEO had to launch by 2017 and then later be upgraded to much more then that. And that made it clear no engine other then already existing RS-25 and the Shuttle Solid boosters could work.

But of course, Constellation was dead, SLS was literally just a rocket that didn't have a mission. Literally non, it had no uses. So Obama space team just came up with some mission that didn't really made sense, but at least they could pretend in marketing material that SLS was anything other then job creation.

Of course the program has just continue to done badly and done all the things anybody with a brain could have predicted already in 2012. Its incredibly expensive legacy hardware. Every aspect of the design makes it not only expensive but also incredibly hard and slow to produce. Every aspect of it makes it hard to operate.

SLS had the best possible budget, often getting more money in the Budget then they even asked for. It has been the darling of congress. SpaceX is delayed, and there are congressional hearings and questions. Tons of paid for media and so on. SLS that consumes more money per year then SpaceX received for the whole moon-lander barley gets mentioned. Under Trump 1 Bridenstein tried to launch an investigation if Orion could be launched on anything other then SLS. This was a pretty bad idea, likely mostly don't to pressure Boeing. Shelby basically told him that he would have to resign if he continued investigating this.

Jared Isaacman just like all the NASA Administrators before him know that this program is incredibly stupidly designed. Its program designed around a bunch of legacy hardware. And really dumb requirement. Really dumb contracting structure. And so on.

Isaacman is at least trying to contain how much money gets drained into the SLS money-pit, by dropping the also late and also over-budget EUS upper stage. This stage would likely have been just another endless money pit inside the money pit. And instead they might get away with a somewhat smaller money pit.

All of this is just an embarrassing shit-show from beginning to end. Between Shuttle derived vehicles and Orion NASA has spent already something on the order of 100-150 billion $ and what they got out of it was 1 SLS launch and a few Orion tests that never tested the whole system. Its going to cost much more and its not gone get much cheaper anytime soon. On the meantime, the complete development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, re-usability and human rating Falcon 9 plus Falcon Heavy, plus Cargo Dragon 1, Cargo Dragon 2 and Crew Dragon cost on the order of 5 billion $ conservatively.

And I'm not saying this as a SpaceX believer who wants all money to go to SpaceX. Distrusted launch (including refueling) where many companies can compete is the right answer specially for launch.