Waste of the Day: NASA Throws Out Pricey Launcher
Topline: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration cancelled development on a new rocket launcher after already spending $1.4 billion on the project. The half-finished launcher will be stripped down and used as spare parts for existing machinery.
Key facts: The Mobile Space Launcher 2 was supposed to send astronauts to the Moon in early 2028 as part of the Artemis IV mission. The construction company Bechtel National began work in June 2019 and was expected to be done in March 2023 at a cost of $383 million.
But NASA never created a reliable cost or schedule estimate, and Bechtel severely underestimated how much manpower the rocket launcher would take to build. Construction did not begin until August 2023.
NASA’s inspector general warned in August 2024 that the project was untenable, at which point $1.1 billion had been spent. Agency officials disagreed and approved another $300 million of payments to Bechtel.
This March, NASA finally admitted the project was a failure and issued a stop work order to Bechtel. Otherwise, the launcher would have been delayed until 2028 and cost $2 billion in total.
“Bechtel’s reluctance to utilize NASA expertise, failure to track risks, challenges with managing the launcher’s weight, and lack of a certified earned value management system impacted the contractor’s cost, schedule, and performance,” the inspector general declared this June.
Federal records show Bechtel is still owed another $100 million that has yet to be disbursed.
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Shawn Quinn, manager of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program, said in a March 29 briefing that parts of the space launcher will be kept in storage as replacements for the existing Space Launcher 1, which was used in the recent Artemis II flight that sent a team of astronauts to fly by the Moon.
“We pivoted the team to begin removing some of the hardware that is common on Mobile Launcher 1 that we can use as critical spares,” Quinn said. “We can put them to good use in future Artemis missions supporting Mobile Launcher 1.”
Summary: NASA will advance intellectual inquiry through proper planning and budgeting, not by stripping down billion-dollar boondoggles for spare parts.
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