re: NASA pushes back dates for Artemis II and Artemis III missions.

I would agree that SLS will be the last cost plus contract that NASA ever awards for large space vehicles. They will move to fixed price contracts like they used for Falcon 9 development etc.

But having said that, NASA has always been all in on private companies hauling the mail. Everything they've ever done in manned spaceflight has been through contracts to private companies.

It's not unreal for SLS costs to drop from 2B per year to 1.6B per year with two launches per year. As you say they've admitted current costs are unsustainable and they are working to bring those costs down through better contracts. That would be 800 mil per launch or per mission vs. 600 mil for SpaceX. So not exactly SpaceX efficiency but it's not absurdly more expensive either. Given the reduction in mission complexity of 1 launch vs 15-20 it actually starts to make sense.

But all of this assumes a market for more launches and what we've seen so far is there isn't one. I'd bet over 90% of SpaceX launches last year were launching Starlink. You say the market is growing, but it empirically isn't (yet). Especially not for super heavy lift vehicles.

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Artemis should be canceled immediately; of course it won’t be as it’s the result of Lockheed Martin and Boeing lobbying.

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Artemis isn't a bad program, it's just SLS that is a national disgrace. Boeing can't/won't do engineering on time like they once did but they lobby better than almost any other company in the world.

Just let Elon do it and call it a fricking day.

NASA is a joke. We’re gonna frick around and let China bust up over there..

They are laughing their asses off at you.

Orion, Gateway, Artemis et al

A word not heard very often applies to this Artemis program. Boondoggle.

We won’t touch the moon again until 2030; this is as good of a slush fund as Ukraine.

nm