NASA watchdog takes aim at Boeing's SLS rocket; Trump's moon mission could cost $50 billion
The rocket and spacecraft NASA plans to use to get astronauts to the moon could cost $50 billion, according to a government watchdog report released Tuesday — far more than the space agency had said it would need to meet a White House mandate to return to the lunar surface by 2024.
The report, by the NASA Inspector General, painted another grim picture of the troubles that have long plagued the Space Launch System rocket as Boeing, NASA’s prime contractor on the rocket, struggles to get the unwieldy program under control. It said that more schedule delays were likely and that the space agency might not be able to meet the goal of landing people on the moon by 2024 or orbiting Mars by the 2030s.
It was the second time in less than a week that Boeing’s work for NASA has been criticized. On Friday, NASA officials said an investigation of the marred test flight of the company’s Starliner spacecraft in December, when the spacecraft was unable to dock with the International Space Station, had identified major problems with Boeing’s testing procedures. Officials said the investigation led to 61 corrective actions and identified 49 gaps in Boeing’s testing procedures. NASA also determined that it would need to embed its own software experts with Boeing’s team to more rigorously oversee its work and testing.
The new IG report blames both NASA’s lax oversight of the program and Boeing’s poor performance for costly delays that would ratchet up the price beyond the $35 billion NASA previously had said it would cost to land astronauts on the moon by 2024. Earlier this year, the White House proposed increasing NASA’s budget significantly, to $25.2 billion for the next fiscal year, with annual increases after that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/10/nasa-boeing-trump-moon-cost/
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