NASA inspector general issues a scathing report on moon effort

[Eugene]

Related: Final Report - IG-22-012 - NASA's Management of the Mobile Launcher 2 Contract (NASA OIG)

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Source: Washington Post

NASA inspector general issues a scathing report on moon effort

The cost of the SLS rocket’s mobile launch tower is expected to be at least $1 billion and be delivered years late

By Christian Davenport
June 9, 2022 at 3:03 p.m. EDT

For years NASA has struggled with ballooning costs of the rocket and spacecraft it wants to use to send astronauts to the moon. Now it has significant problems with an obscure, but vital, piece of hardware used to transport and launch the rocket: a tower of scaffolding known as a mobile launcher.

In a scathing report issued Thursday, NASA’s inspector general said that a second version of the mobile launcher, needed to accommodate a taller version of the rocket, is expected to cost at least $1 billion — more than two times the original contract value that NASA awarded in 2019. The IG said it would take an additional 2½ years to build.

NASA already has built a mobile launcher for its Space Launch System rocket, at a cost of $668.7 million. That program also suffered enormous cost increases after NASA’s Constellation program was canceled, meaning the agency had to redesign the tower to fit a different rocket, the SLS.

But that mobile launch tower will have to be replaced after just three missions because NASA plans to use a different version of the SLS, one with a more powerful upper stage that would extend the rocket’s height by some 40 feet, for later trips to the moon in its Artemis lunar campaign. The later version of the SLS will be capable of delivering 40 percent more payload to the lunar surface.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/09/nasa-moon-rocket-ig-report/

[Warpy]

1. I've been inside the VAB

which is where they put the Saturn V rocket they used for the moon launches together. That building is so huge that there were clouds up near the top and a fine mist was falling that day and apparently that's not an uncommon occurrence. You can see that thing miles away up and down the east coast of Florida.

The space shuttle assembly looked dinky in comparison to the size of that building, which also sported the biggest roll up door I've also ever seen.

I wouldn't think the old mobile gantry and trackway would still work 50 years later, not in Florida. So this will be over budget and late, so what else is new?

I'm just surprised we ever got there, at all. I remember what the tech was like back then.