They should leave the enviro-propaganda business to the algore acolytes.
Ping.
To da Moon, Alice!
Only $383 million and this just moves and holds the rocket:
NASA Awards Contract for Second Mobile Launcher at Kennedy Space Center
NASA has selected Bechtel National, Inc., of Reston, Virginia, to design and build a second mobile launcher, known as Mobile Launcher 2 or ML2, for Exploration Ground Systems at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The cost-plus-award-fee end item contract has a total value of approximately $383 million. Bechtel National will complete the design, build, test, and commissioning of the mobile launcher within a 44-month period beginning July 1.
ML2 is the ground structure that will be used to assemble, process, and launch NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) Block 1B rocket and Orion spacecraft from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy for missions under NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach.
It will consist of a base structure, the platform for SLS, and a tower equipped with a number of connection lines called umbilicals, as well as launch accessories that will provide SLS and Orion with power, communications, coolant, fuel, and stabilization prior to launch.
Lunar lander concept hasn’t changed in 50 years.
Minus the fuel tanks, how big and mighty is it?
I saw the shuttle and it was a tiny little thing.
*ping*
The SLS has always impressed me as an intermediate step between the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. Unlike the Shuttle, none of its parts are meant to be reused.