/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15005391
Would've made more sense as the National Launch System in the 1990s.
After the deeply flawed Constellation Program was cancelled, Congress passed a law forcing NASA to build SLS, and specified that they should reuse shuttle contractors and shuttle components to the greatest extent practicable.
This meant that they would take the most expensive, most complex launch vehicle in regular service, and frankenstein it into an entirely new vehicle.
That's bad enough, but the contracting process created no incentive to get anything done punctually, cheaply, or effectively, and the contractors (and NASA management/oversight) have failed to deliver on any of those points. Capability-wise, it's not ambitious, and yet the program is extremely expensive, and behind key milestones by six+ years without even getting to a decent level of maturity.
'Sustainable' lunar operations become a joke, as the maximum production cadence for SLS is two per year, and the cost per launch is in the billions.
It's the epitome of everything wrong with the space contracting system, and the post-Apollo space program.