According to a report released yesterday [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general, the decision by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to not only “pause” the Lunar Gateway station (killing its HALO module) but also cancel SLS’s upgraded upper stage (EUS), its related stage adaptor (USA), and the giant mobile launcher (ML-2) needed for that taller upper stage, saved the taxpayer billions in additional cost overruns, and has likely accelerated the Artemis program significantly.

NASA’s reformulation of the Artemis campaign to meet the President’s National Space Policy and increase its cadence of missions by standardizing the SLS heavy-lift rocket resulted in the termination or repurposing of several Artemis-related systems, including the EUS, USA, ML-2, and HALO.

Over the course of their life cycles, the combined contract values for these efforts ballooned from nearly $2.8 billion to $5.9 billion and NASA extended their contracted delivery dates by up to 7 years. However, our projections indicate that if NASA allowed work to continue to completion, the systems would have cost more and taken longer than what was on contract.

Specifically, the IG estimated that the overruns for the upper stage, the stage adaptor, and the mobile launcher would have ended up costing four to five times their original budgets. Gateway’s HALO module was less out of control, but it was still going to go more than 30% over budget. Overall, all four projects would have cost NASA almost $5 billion in additional expenses, with all four likely to also be considerably behind schedule. The upper stage and mobile launcher were certainly not going to be ready when needed.

The IG made no recommendations. It released this report to provide NASA, the White House, Congress, and the public the information so as to properly judge the agency’s actions, as well as provide guidance to the agency itself.