GAO: Next SLS Artemis launches will almost certainly be delayed
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers
According to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released yesterday, NASA’S continuing delays and technical problems building the various ground systems required for the next few Artemis launches will almost certainly cause those launches to be delayed.
The schedule at present is as follows:
- September 2025: Artemis-2 will be the program’s first manned mission, taking four astranauts around the Moon.
- September 2026: Artemis-3 will complete the first manned lunar landing.
- September 2028: Artemis-4 will send four astronauts to the Lunar Gateway station in orbit around the Moon, and then complete the second manned lunar landing.
The GAO report notes at length that modifications to the mobile launch platform SLS will use on the first two missions is taking longer than planned. It also notes that the problems completing the second mobile launcher continue, with the budget growing from $383 million to $1.1 billion, and the work years behind schedule with no certainty it will be completed in time for the 2028 mission. These issues are the same ones noted by NASA’s inspector general in August 2024.
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”
This report focused exclusively on the scheduling delays for the ground systems that will be used by SLS for each launch. It did not address the serious questions that remain concerning the serious heat shield damage experienced by the Orion capsule when it returned to Earth on its first unmanned mission in late 2022. NASA has been studying that problem now for two years, and as yet has not revealed a solution.
I continue to predict that the first manned landing, now scheduled for 2026, will not occur before 2030, six years behind the schedule first proposed by President Trump but actually fifteen years behind the schedule initially proposed by President George Bush Jr in 2004. All in all, it will take NASA almost a third of a century to put American astronauts back on the Moon, assuming the landing occurs in 2030 as I now predict. Compare that with the development time of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy. Proposed in 2017, it is already flying, and will almost certainly complete its first private manned lunar mission and its first test missions to Mars by 2027. The contrast is striking.
More and more the entire part of Artemis run by NASA is proving to be the failed disaster I predicted it would be in 2011. No wonder former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote an op-ed yesterday calling for its cancellation. Like most politicians, reality is finally percolating into his thick skull, though several decades late.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers
According to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released yesterday, NASA’S continuing delays and technical problems building the various ground systems required for the next few Artemis launches will almost certainly cause those launches to be delayed.
The schedule at present is as follows:
- September 2025: Artemis-2 will be the program’s first manned mission, taking four astranauts around the Moon.
- September 2026: Artemis-3 will complete the first manned lunar landing.
- September 2028: Artemis-4 will send four astronauts to the Lunar Gateway station in orbit around the Moon, and then complete the second manned lunar landing.
The GAO report notes at length that modifications to the mobile launch platform SLS will use on the first two missions is taking longer than planned. It also notes that the problems completing the second mobile launcher continue, with the budget growing from $383 million to $1.1 billion, and the work years behind schedule with no certainty it will be completed in time for the 2028 mission. These issues are the same ones noted by NASA’s inspector general in August 2024.
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”
This report focused exclusively on the scheduling delays for the ground systems that will be used by SLS for each launch. It did not address the serious questions that remain concerning the serious heat shield damage experienced by the Orion capsule when it returned to Earth on its first unmanned mission in late 2022. NASA has been studying that problem now for two years, and as yet has not revealed a solution.
I continue to predict that the first manned landing, now scheduled for 2026, will not occur before 2030, six years behind the schedule first proposed by President Trump but actually fifteen years behind the schedule initially proposed by President George Bush Jr in 2004. All in all, it will take NASA almost a third of a century to put American astronauts back on the Moon, assuming the landing occurs in 2030 as I now predict. Compare that with the development time of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy. Proposed in 2017, it is already flying, and will almost certainly complete its first private manned lunar mission and its first test missions to Mars by 2027. The contrast is striking.
More and more the entire part of Artemis run by NASA is proving to be the failed disaster I predicted it would be in 2011. No wonder former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote an op-ed yesterday calling for its cancellation. Like most politicians, reality is finally percolating into his thick skull, though several decades late.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Well, the most recent Starship had problems with reentry ablatives also. But there’s no inspection of those tiles, is there? The heavier the vehicle the more difficult Earth reentry will be.
M. Murcek: Yes, there was some minor burn-through on Starship, but nothing that seriously impeded its ability to land a bullseye in the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, SpaceX engineers got plenty of data on that event from Starship’s video recorders. They don’t need to do an inspection, though they’ll certainly get a chance when the FAA eventually clears them to make a landing over, well, land.
I am beginning to despair on the chance to live to see our return to the moon much less human landings on Mars.
In another thread, Dick Eagleson said:
“……one looks forward to Donald and Elon sticking a Roto-Rooter up the backside of the entire Executive branch bureaucracy….”
I share that hope but think that even that is not enough to get a return of humans to the moon before 2030 (which maybe too late, for me at least.).
Elon is laser focused on complete rapid turnaround reliability which is needed for making life interplanetary. I keep hoping for an architecture that is willing to throw some Starship systems away to enable a low total mass 2- or 3-person lunar landing, 3 to 5 day lunar stay and return. Don’t worry about earth reentry on Starship or booster/ship recovery and reuse.
Just get Old Glory and an American (don’t care about the color of their skin, their genitalia or their pronouns) back to the Lunar surface ASAP!! Silly I guess, but I think it would make a major POSITIVE statement to our nation about our capability to actually DO THINGS that matter and would give me some hope for the future of my grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Probably a combination of Falcon 9 / Dragon to LEO and a stripped down Starship from LEO to LLO/landing and return to LEO. The entire SLS/ Orion / Gateway architecture seems to be designed simply to burn enormous sums of money and time with no actual trip occurring.
Sadly, I do not have the funds of Delos D. Harriman to make that happen myself.