![NASA conducts a test of an RS-25 rocket engine on the A-1 Test Stand at Stennis Space Center.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SSC-2015-00064_large-800x533.jpg)
NASA
An independent report published Thursday had troubling findings concerning the money spent by the agency on propulsion for the Space Launch System rocket. Furthermore, the report by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin warns that if these costs should not controlled, it could jeopardize plans to return to the Moon.
Bluntly, Martin wrote that if the agency doesn’t rein in spending, “NASA and its contracts will proceed to exceed planned cost and schedule, leading to a reduced availability of funds, delayed launches, and the erosion of the general public’s trust within the agency’s ability to responsibly spend taxpayer money and meet mission goals and objectives—including returning humans safely to the Moon.”
The 50-page report analyzed contracts that NASA has given to Aerojet Rocketdyne, for RS-25 principal engines, and to Northrop Grumman, for solid-rocket boosters. The engines and boosters power the primary stage of the Space Launch System rocket, which made a successful debut flight in November 2022. The rocket will launch astronauts for the Artemis missions to the Moon.
A whole lot of money
The report found that efforts to refurbish RS-25 engines, manufacture latest ones, and produce solid rocket boosters for the initial Artemis missions have resulted in about $6 billion in cost increases and greater than six years in schedule delays in comparison with NASA’s original projections.
To place this into perspective, Martin is talking about the associated fee , not the whole cost of the engines and boosters. Which means that overruns for the propulsion system of the SLS rocket alone are costing the space agency about as much as it should spend on developing two reusable lunar landers—SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.
The principal difference is the contracting method, and Martin uses—albeit in bureaucratic terms—harsh language for NASA’s alternative of cost-plus contracting. Cost-plus contracts are intended to be utilized in experimental and cutting-edge technology programs, reminiscent of the development of the James Webb Space Telescope. But on this case, Aerojet was modifying engines that had flown multiple times on the space shuttle program; and Northrop was modifying boosters that were similarly used again and again.
“The agency’s reliance on cost-plus awards increases its financial risk,” Martin wrote. “In our judgment, NASA has used cost-plus contracting structures for its SLS booster and engine contracts to a greater extent than warranted. Although the SLS is a brand new vehicle, its heritage boosters and RS-25 engines are well-established.”
Cost-plus contracts pay the recipient the whole amount of their costs plus a fee. That is in contrast to the fixed-price contracts NASA has given SpaceX and Blue Origin for landers, the design of which is far more experimental and cutting-edge in nature than repurposing space shuttle hardware.
The brand new report also takes issue with the fees awarded as a part of the propulsion contracts. For instance, although Aerojet delivered only five of 16 of the refurbished RS-25 rocket engines by the top of its contract, it was rated “superb” by the space agency for this subpar work.
Costly engines
There are other head-scratching issues raised by the report. For instance, the present cost of producing a brand new RS-25 principal engine—which shall be used for the Artemis V mission and onward—is about $100 million. NASA and Aerojet try to realize a 30 percent cost savings by the top of this decade, bringing the associated fee right down to $70.5 million.
Nevertheless, in projecting these savings, Martin notes that NASA neglected to incorporate some costs: “When calculating the whole cost of the brand new RS-25 engines, NASA and Aerojet are only including material, engineering support, and touch labor (hands-on labor effort), while project management and overhead costs are excluded.” Who knows, possibly Aerojet’s managers will work totally free for a number of years.
In comparison with the private sector, even getting the associated fee of an RS-25 engine right down to $70.5 million is a preposterously high price. Blue Origin manufactures engines of comparable power and size, the BE-4, for lower than $20 million. And SpaceX is in search of to push the similarly powerful Raptor rocket engine costs even lower, to lower than $1 million per engine.
Based on the entire latest data in his latest report, Martin said his office has needed to revise its estimate of the whole cost of a Space System Launch, inclusive of ground systems and the Orion spacecraft. It’s now $4.2 billion.