Rather than building an obsolescent, obscenely-over-budget jumbo rocket, NASA should turn to building truly innovative space technologies and plan a r

The Next President Should End the ‘Senate’ Launch System Rocket

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2024-10-12 15:00:05

Rather than building an obsolescent, obscenely-over-budget jumbo rocket, NASA should turn to building truly innovative space technologies and plan a realistic lunar landing program

In the annals of U.S. pork barrel spending, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket towers over rivals like Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere” or the U.S. Air Force’s $10,000 toilet seat, and not just on account of its eventual 365 foot height. At $5.7 billion for the first launch, a throwaway SLS rocket and its Orion capsule will costs orders of magnitude more than their reusable competitors per launch.

Those costs matter to the $25 billion space agency, which hopes in the next decade to return astronauts to the moon, deorbit the International Space Station, visit the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and much more. “For NASA, this is not a time for business as usual,” said Norman Augustine, chair of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) panel that released a report on NASA in September warning of risks to the agency’s future springing from a mismatch of its ambitions and means.

Unfortunately, business as usual is just what NASA has with SLS. Foisted on the Obama administration in 2010 by senators from NASA center states incensed about jobs losses after the space shuttle’s retirement, the “Senate” Launch System stands as a monument to Sunbelt socialism. Incredibly wasteful, each launch will throw away left-over reusable space shuttle engines—some of the most peerless technology ever built by humanity—making them dead ends as innovations.