SLS Opinion and General Space Discussion Thread - March 2022

SLS was meant to cost $10B. They had $10B by their sixth year. Yearly costs have only gone up, and dramatically, since then.

Orion was meant to cost $6B. They had $6B by their fifth year. That was over a decade ago. They have had $1.4B a year every year since then.

Wikipedia does not have a similar summary for the ground systems, but that was meant to cost $2B and is now costing $0.6B/y, so there's no way that hasn't overrun just as badly.

You cannot blame this on inconsistent funding. It just does not reflect the reality of the situation, which is that SLS and its dependencies are continually funded, continually pulling back more money, have bipartisan governmental support, and has long, long gone past the point where a commercial provider funding out of pocket would have gone bankrupt.

/r/SpaceLaunchSystem Thread Parent