Though NASA administration Jared Isaacman continues to support unequivocally NASA’s planned Artemis-2 ten-day manned mission around the Moon — presently targeting a March launch date — in a statement today on X he revealed that he also recognizes the serious limitations of the SLS rocket.

And it also takes two-plus years between launches

The Artemis vision began with President Trump, but the SLS architecture and its components long predate his administration, with much of the heritage clearly traced back to the Shuttle era. As I stated during my hearings, and will say again, this is the fastest path to return humans to the Moon and achieve our near-term objectives through at least Artemis V, but it is not the most economic path and certainly not the forever path.

The flight rate is the lowest of any NASA-designed vehicle, and that should be a topic of discussion. It is why we undertake wet dress rehearsals, Pre-FRR, and FRR, and why we will not press to launch until we are absolutely ready.

These comments were also in connection with the first wet dress rehearsal countdown that NASA performed with SLS/Orion in the past few days, a rehearsal that had to be terminated early because of fuel leaks. NASA now plans to do another wet dress rehearsal, requiring it to push back the Artemis-2 launch until March.

I think there is more going on here than meets the eye.

First of all, I think Isaacman is very aware that in the first launch of SLS in 2022, there were numerous delays due to similar problems. It took three wet dress rehearsals in April through June to finally allow the agency to commit to an August launch. In every case the problem was related to hydrogen fuel leaks or improper temperatures during fueling. Then the August launch was scrubbed twice because of more fuel leaks, forcing the agency to delay the launch again until November, when it was finally able to complete the countdown and launch.

I think Isaacman is telling us indirectly that he is going to demand a perfect dress rehearsal countdown before he will be willing to sign off on the actual launch. Based on SLS’s track record, it is therefore very likely that a launch this spring will not take place. Right now the launch has been delayed until March. If one or two dress rehearsals push it back into April and later, NASA will simply run out of time in this launch window.

Nor is this unlikely. There were five countdowns for Artemis-1 before it was finally able to launch, causing several months of delays. If this happens now, SLS won’t launch until later this year.

In other words, Isaacman is telling us by his statement today that he wants to make very clear to the public — and to the politicians in DC — the problems presented by SLS/Orion’s expensive and cumbersome design. During his nomination hearings he was forced by those politicians to commit to SLS/Orion and this Moon mission. He is now I think laying the groundwork to convince these Congress critters that a major change is essential, especially if they want to get their wish of creating a lunar base ahead of the Chinese. By forcing a perfect launch countdown and thus multiple delays — for entirely right reasons — he is going to force the politicians to reconsider SLS at last.

Superheavy after the October 2024 flight,
safely captured during the very first attempt

I am of course speculating, as I really have no idea what Isaacman is really thinking. I do know however that if SLS experiences multiple dress rehearsals with problems and gets delayed by months, this is exactly what is going to happen, even if Isaacman isn’t planning it.

The public is now paying close attention, and we have a NASA administrator who is not willing to sugarcoat these delays. That combination is going to make SLS look increasingly bad as it undergoes more likely “glitches” and delays, doing so in plain sight instead of limited to space geeks who pay attention.

And these delays will look even worse in comparison to Starship/Superheavy, which should launch itself at least twice or three times in the next six months, doing spectacular things and doing them regularly and almost routinely.