WASHINGTON : NASA's plans to turn over its flagship rocket to contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman to find more buyers and bring down costs faces steep hurdles thanks to meager demand even from the Pentagon and a sprawling supplier network.The U.S. space agency is pushing ahead with plans to hand owner
WASHINGTON : NASA's plans to turn over its flagship rocket to contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman to find more buyers and bring down costs faces steep hurdles thanks to meager demand even from the Pentagon and a sprawling supplier network.
As a commercial venture, the SLS could face other challenges including competition from cheaper and reusable rockets such as Starship from Elon Musk's SpaceX and New Glenn from fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. The SLS is not reusable. A lack of SLS launch dates amid a backlog of Artemis program missions in the coming years is another roadblock, even if there is demand for the rocket beyond NASA, Chaplain said.
NASA officials said a key part of the plan is finding new customers, which could include the Pentagon or commercial players. NASA officials have acknowledged that squeezing the roughly $23 billion SLS program, its vast supplier network and a workforce of thousands of agency and contractor employees into a cheaper and privately managed contract will not be easy. Boeing has said the SLS program has created 28,000 jobs.
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