Tag: Bechtel

GAO: Next SLS Artemis launches will almost certainly be delayed

10:52 am

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
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.

Orion's damage heat shield
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.

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NASA IG: NASA’s effort to build new SLS mobile launcher is an epic disaster

12:20 pm

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

According to a new report [pdf] from NASA’s inspector general, both NASA and its contractor Bechtel have allowed the cost and schedule for the new larger SLS mobile launcher (ML-2) (on the right in the graphic) to go completely out of control, with the first launch on that platform to be delayed again until 2029.

NASA projects the ML-2 will cost over three times more than planned. In 2019, NASA estimated the entire ML-2 project from design through construction would cost under $500 million with construction completed and the ML-2 delivered to NASA by March 2023. In December 2023, NASA estimated the ML-2 project would cost $1.5 billion, including $1.3 billion for the Bechtel contract and $168 million for other project costs, with delivery of the launcher to NASA in November 2026. In June 2024, NASA established the Agency Baseline Commitment (ABC)—the cost and schedule baseline committed to Congress against which a project is measured—for a ML-2 project cost of $1.8 billion and a delivery date of September 2027. Even with the establishment of the ABC, NASA intends to keep Bechtel accountable to the cost and schedule agreed to in December 2023.

Despite the Agency’s increased cost projections, our analysis indicates costs could be even higher due in part to the significant amount of construction work that remains. Specifically, our projections indicate the total cost could reach $2.7 billion by the time Bechtel delivers the ML-2 to NASA. With the time NASA requires after delivery to prepare the launcher, we project the ML-2 will not be ready to support a launch until spring 2029, surpassing the planned September2028 Artemis IV launch date.

This quote actually makes things sounder better than they are. Bechtel’s original contract was for $383 million, which means the IG’s present final estimate of $2.7 billion is more than seven times higher. The contract was awarded in 2019 and was supposed to be completed by 2023, in four years. Instead, at best it will take Bechtel a decade to complete the job.

The IG notes that this contact was cost-plus, and considers this the main cause of these cost overruns. It also notes that NASA has had the option to convert the contract to fixed-price, but has chosen not to do so.

Possibly the most damning aspect of the IG report is its conclusion, which essentially admits that nothing can be done to fix this problem.
» Read more

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SLS’s 2nd mobile launcher to cost more than $1.5 billion, 3x what was initially budgeted

11:47 am

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

According to an inspector general report [pdf] released today, the second mobile launcher being built by the company Bechtel to transport its SLS rocket from the assembly building to the launch site is likely going to cost more than $1.5 billion, three times what was initially budgeted, and will not be completed any earlier than the end of 2027, four years behind schedule.

Compounding Bechtel’s projected cost increases and schedule delays, an ML-2 [mobile launcher-2] project analysis provided only a 3.9 percent confidence level that the nearly $1 billion cost [twice the original budget] and October 2025 [2.5 years late] delivery estimates were accurate. NASA requires projects to develop budgets and schedules consistent with a 70 percent joint cost and schedule confidence level (JCL), meaning a 70 percent likelihood the project will finish equal to or less than the planned costs and schedule. In fact, an Independent Review Team analysis determined the project would require an additional $447 million and 27 months, for a total contract value of $1.5 billion and a launcher delivery date of December 2027—a schedule that would enable an Artemis IV launch no earlier than the end of 2028.

The first mobile launcher, shown on the left in the graphic, cost more than $1 billion and will used only three times, at most. The second, on the right, is required for all of the assigned interplanetary tasks being given to the full size version of SLS beyond those first three test flights. Without it that version of SLS cannot launch. And even if the launcher is ready by 2028, as the IG report suggests, that will be more than a decade behind schedule, and six years from now.
» Read more

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NASA’s second SLS mobile launch tower now behind schedule

10:47 am

Par for the course: According to one member of NASA’s safety panel, the contractor building NASA’s second SLS launch tower, is having performance problems and is already behind schedule.

On Thursday, during a meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, one of its members provided an update on Mobile Launcher-2. George Nield, an engineer and scientist who previously led commercial space transportation for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the 90-percent design, review, and fabrication drawings for the large structure are behind schedule. These are the engineering drawings that should closely represent the final design and inform a construction schedule and logistics plan.

“Mobile Launcher-2 has encountered some challenges,” Nield said. “The selected contractor, Bechtel, has experienced some performance issues associated with underestimating the complexity of the project and some supplier related issues, as well as COVID.”

Note that NASA spent about $1 billion on the first tower, to be used only three times, at most. Its contract with Bechtel says the second tower will cost $383 million, but no one expects that number to be met.

Assuming Bechtel does not go over budget (hah!), NASA will have spent $1.4 billion on SLS’s launch towers, one of which will be used two or three times and then abandoned. That’s three times the cost of what SpaceX spent developing Falcon Heavy, and about a third the total development cost of Starship/Superheavy, including its planned launchpads in both Boca Chica and Florida.

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