Someone finally said out loud about the real price
NASA Inspector General Paul Martin acted as an independent expert on the activities of the space agency. For most of his tenure as Inspector General, since his appointment in 2009, Martin has overseen NASA's development of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft.
Although his office, during this time, has released about a dozen reports on various aspects of these programs, he never briefly stated his thoughts about these programs — until last Tuesday.
Speaking at a hearing before the House Science Committee on NASA's Artemis program, Martin revealed for the first time the operating costs of the launch vehicle and spacecraft. Moreover, he blames NASA and especially its major aerospace contractors for their "very poor" work on the development of these vehicles.
Martin said that the operating costs for one Artemis launch alone— for the SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft and ground systems alone - would amount to $4.1 billion. This, according to him, is "a price that seems unacceptable to us." With this comment, Martin, in fact, "throws down the gauntlet" and he claims that NASA, for such a price, cannot have a long-term research program based on SLS and Orion.
Cost layout
Later during the hearing, Martin detailed the costs of the flight, which will relate to at least the first four missions of the Artemis program: $2.2 billion for the manufacture of one SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for the Orion spacecraft and $ 300 million to the European Space Agency for the Orion service module. NASA, Martin said, verified and confirmed these figures.
What's striking about these costs is that they don't include the tens of billions of dollars that NASA has already spent on developing the Orion spacecraft since 2005 and the Space Launch System rocket since 2011. If we take into account these costs for the development of the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft, the figure of $4.1 billion for the mission that Martin called will easily double.
This figure is much higher than NASA had previously calculated. Five years ago, a senior NASA official told Ars that the space agency would like to reduce operating costs per mission per year to $2 billion or less. Another source at the time said the agency's internal goal was $1.5 billion per mission.
How much will it cost to fly SLS and Orion? Finally some answers
Martin also said that NASA is hiding the costs it spends on the Artemis program, and that overall, according to his office, NASA will spend $93 billion from 2012 to 2025 on the Artemis program.
"Without NASA's full accounting and accurate reporting of the total costs of current and future Artemis missions, it will be much more difficult for Congress and the administration to make informed decisions about NASA's long—term funding needs — the key to making Artemis a sustainable project," Martin said.
Everything is "OK"
Later during the hearing, U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) asked if the additional costs would be reduced by performing more than one Artemis mission per year. Martin said he didn't know for sure. Moreover, NASA does not plan to launch more than one Artemis mission per year, so the question is somewhat abstract.
Martin, however, seemed to doubt that significant cost savings would be achieved due to the inefficiency of the program and its large aerospace contractors.
"Part of the funds goes to improving the efficiency of major contractors such as Boeing," Martin said. "One of the problems we saw in the development of the SLS and Orion is, of course, a complex development - but we noticed very poor contractor work on the part of Boeing, poor planning and poor execution."
Then, without prompting, Martin continued to criticize the space programs created by Congress to finance the development of rockets and spacecraft. Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate advised NASA to use cost-plus contracts, which guarantee that the companies involved in the development and operation of these systems will cover all their costs plus remuneration. This, as a rule, reduces the incentives for timely performance of work within the established budget. (It is noteworthy that NASA was asked to continue using cost-plus contracts even after the completion of the development program.)
"We saw that the cost-plus contracts that NASA used to develop the SLS—Orion space system worked in the interests of the contractors, not in the interests of NASA," Martin said.
It didn't sound like a deafening explosion, but at congressional hearings with sober-minded bureaucrats like Martin, it was definitely fireworks.
Congressman Babin was not the initiator of the SLS and Orion programs, since he came to Congress only in 2015. But his district includes the Johnson Space Center near Houston, so he consistently supports these programs. If he was surprised by Martin's revelations about the cost of SLS and Orion or their poor management, he didn't say so. Instead, he said: "Okay," and then went on.
Concerned about privatization
In reality, no one should expect Congress to worry about the high cost of the SLS and Orion program. The legislature itself created the programs in this way.
In fact, key members of Congress have criticized NASA every time the agency has tried to abandon cost-plus contracts and take a more commercial approach through "fixed-price contracts." This skepticism of Congress persists even when the commercial approach bears fruit. For example, as tensions with Russia grow, NASA has independent access to space only thanks to the Crew Dragon spacecraft built with this approach.
However, there are supporters of an alternative approach in Congress. The Chairman of the House Science Committee, Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), in his opening remarks at the hearing, positively assessed NASA's commercial space efforts. The context of her statement concerns NASA's desire to acquire commercial services for space flights in the future, and not to control their development on their own, as was the case with SLS and Orion.
"I think the result of past actions is very disturbing," Johnson said. "And this raises the question of whether NASA will retain the capabilities and manpower in the agency that will be required to deliver American astronauts to Mars if all these privatization plans are implemented."
At least we know about the priorities of the Congress at this time.
Eric Berger
