The first launch of NASA’s SLS rocket delayed again

Behind the Black ^ | February 21, 2018 | Robert Zimmerman

[Voption]

SLS continues to be this ever receding but very expensive fantasy, scheduled for a future that never arrives, while spending enormous amounts of money that would be far better spent in other ways. The first launch, should it happen in 2020, would be three years later than originally planned, nine years after the initiation of the SLS project, and sixteen years after George Bush first proposed it. For this single unmanned test mission NASA will have spent about $25 billion.

[Voption]

Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot acknowledged that the space agency’s heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System, would not make its first uncrewed test flight until 2020. The first crewed SLS-Orion mission is still due to take a trip around the moon and back in 2023.

[Paladin2]

The US apparently has no Rocket Scientists anymore.

[hopespringseternal]

They all work for SpaceX now.

NASA has no business at all developing a launcher. They need launch services, which are already available.

[phormer phrog phlyer]

The SLS is kind of like the F-35.

Over promised,under delivered and way over budget.

[gaijin]

NASA = post office, DMV, Blockbuster Video, Kmart

[SunkenCiv]

The SLS is just a non-shuttle replacement for the Shuttle which uses an iteration of the Shuttle liquid-fueled engines, but since that won't get it off the ground (no joke), the strap-on boosters are extended burn versions of the solid rocket boosters used in the Shuttle. IOW, they're getting paid to give us essentially the same thing we used to have, minus the wings.

Obviously, the system is obsolete before it ever flies. NASA's and the DoD launch systems should be migrated onto the order-of-magntitude cheaper systems in use by SpaceX and in development at SpaceX and Blue Origin. Period. Thanks Voption.

[sarge83]

Yeah NASA makes sure all their employees whether needed or not get to punch the clock and get paid. They need to decide if they want to remain relevant in manned space travel at some point. If they do they have to fire a lot of people, punish financially some contractors who are not delivering as promised and on budget and commit to manned space flight. Right now they are as irrelevant in manned space flight as the North Korean manned space program.