NASA Is Building Moon Rockets, Maybe for the Last Time

Some former NASA and industry officials say such rocket projects may be increasingly unworkable, following delays with the SLS effort and rising costs. Companies like

Elon Musk’s

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., meanwhile, are developing their own rockets—potentially making NASA even more of a client of private-sector operators in the future.

“The launch industry is at a point where the technology is so mature that it may not be necessary to have the U.S. government invest in it,” said Dan Goldin, a former NASA administrator. “It may be we’re at a tipping point with this rocket.”

Leaders at NASA have defended the program, saying there aren’t at present alternatives as powerful as SLS vehicles, and have pledged to reduce costs. The SLS rockets cost the agency an estimated $22.3 billion as of last summer, with billions more expected to be spent on the first few flights.

The huge vehicles are meant to launch Orion spacecraft, which are designed to carry astronauts on future missions. Those ships, developed by

Lockheed Martin Corp.

, have cost the agency billions in additional funding. NASA wants to use an SLS rocket and Orion ship as part a flight that would return astronauts to the moon in 2025.

The space agency followed its longtime playbook for the SLS rockets, hiring private companies like

Boeing Co.

and

Northrop Grumman Corp.

to develop the vehicles. For decades, NASA tapped aerospace contractors to build rockets like the Saturn V vehicle, which blasted spacecraft carrying astronauts toward the moon. The agency owned and operated those rockets.

A dozen years ago, Congress directed NASA to acquire a powerful rocket system, saying the vehicles would allow the agency to conduct deeper-space missions. Current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, then a senator representing Florida, played a key role in shepherding passage of the bill.

As of August 2021, Boeing held NASA contracts valued at $11.1 billion related to its work on different stages of SLS rockets, according to NASA’s inspector general. Northrop Grumman had a contract with NASA valued at $4.3 billion at the time to provide booster hardware for the vehicles.

Paul Martin, the NASA inspector general, in March described the expected costs, including ground operations, for the first four launches of SLS rockets and Orion spacecraft as unsustainable. His office has also criticized how contractors behind SLS have performed and said they faced technical issues that contributed to cost overruns.

A Boeing spokeswoman said NASA development costs, after adjusting for inflation, for SLS have been a quarter of those for Saturn V. Costs will continue to become more affordable as teams move from vehicle development to operations, she said.

Boeing’s responsibilities for SLS include building the rockets’ core stage, where massive tanks hold propellant to power engines.

John Shannon,

a vice president overseeing Boeing’s SLS work, said the company faced challenges with welding and integrating components.

Boeing and the other contractors also had to show suppliers how to build parts that could be employed on a rocket meant to be used for human spaceflight, Mr. Shannon said. Around 1,100 companies around the U.S. have contributed to the program, according to NASA.

“I think we very much underestimated early on how long it would take to get the supply chain, nationally, to be able to support this vehicle,” said Mr. Shannon, a former NASA executive.

Northrop Grumman has incorporated lessons learned from its role in the rocket’s first planned orbital launch into preparations for the second flight, reducing hardware costs and its development timeline, Wendy Williams, vice president for propulsion systems at the company, said in a statement.

The Orion spacecraft program has also run into problems, including technical challenges and cost overruns, according to the NASA inspector general, which estimated Lockheed Martin’s contracts for the ship amounted to $16.5 billion as of last summer.

Lisa Callahan,

vice president for commercial civil space at Lockheed Martin, said costs for the Orion vehicle will decline, in part as the company reuses parts of vehicles after flights. “We’re going to streamline,” she said.

While the SLS rockets rely on NASA’s traditional approach, the agency has shifted to purchasing space-transport services for other missions, tapping SpaceX vehicles for crew and cargo runs to the International Space Station for NASA, and Northrop Grumman vehicles for cargo flights.

Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator between the start of the first Obama administration and 2013, said funding for SLS, as well as for the Orion vehicles, would have been better spent spurring more private-sector development of space vehicles.

Some former NASA officials said the agency needs to have powerful rockets in house if it can’t tap one available on the market. The massive Starship rocket system that SpaceX has been developing for deep-space missions hasn’t been fully proven yet, said Wayne Hale, a former NASA executive who worked on the agency’s space shuttle program.

“Because of the nature of commercial-based flight, we don’t really know the status of the Starship,” Mr. Hale said.

NASA already plans to use a variation of SpaceX’s Starship to transfer astronauts to the surface of the moon from lunar orbit, awarding the company a fixed-price $2.9 billion contract for the work. So far, SpaceX has conducted a few shorter test flights of Starship, while the company seeks regulatory approval to launch deeper orbital demonstration missions from a site in Texas.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Nelson, the NASA administrator, said at a briefing last month there currently isn’t an alternative to the towering SLS vehicles the agency has funded. He didn’t rule out that such rockets could emerge.

“But right now, we are proceeding,” he said.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at [email protected]