posted 08-02-2016 11:50 AM               

For the past six years, NASA has been intensely focused on sending people to Mars — but the rocket and spacecraft that the agency is building for the job face delays and budget problems. That's according to two new independent reviews (1, 2) done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal agency that conducts audits on behalf of Congress.

Released last week, the reports paint a grim picture for NASA's Orion crew capsule and the Space Launch System (SLS) — the huge new expendable rocket that would launch the crew capsule to space. The GAO has little confidence that both the Orion and the SLS will meet their scheduled milestones, and the capsule could exceed its intended budget, the GAO hints.

posted 08-02-2016 12:00 PM               

"We've got reasonable margin in our schedules," [Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of human spaceflight for NASA] said. "It's foolish to think there won't be problems ahead of us, that's the nature of a development program. I guarantee there will be more stuff coming. But we're in the process of building a robust schedule that can deal with the challenges ahead of us."

"We had planned on getting the service module from the Europeans in January," he said. "We will now get that service module more likely in April. We're preparing for it to even be a little bit later than that."

Gerstenmaier added that delay will cause NASA to adjust the timing of other elements of overall EM-1 preparations to keep the mission on schedule. One possibility he said NASA was considering was to conduct a "wet dress rehearsal" of the SLS, where the rocket is brought out to the pad and fueled, without Orion.

"The teams are looking at the challenges of, 'Okay, the Orion won't be there as early as we thought, so what other activities can we do in front of that, that still make sense?'" he said. "You're seeing a lot of real-time planning."

posted 08-02-2016 12:40 PM               

Problems with the Gemini program abounded from the start... All of these difficulties shot an estimated $350 million program to over $1 billion. The overruns were successfully justified by the space agency, however, as necessities to meet the Apollo landing commitment.

Initial NASA estimates of the costs of Project Apollo were about $20 billion through the end of the decade.

posted 08-05-2016 12:26 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by p51:
Does anyone know how far past the budget the Apollo missions went? At first, lots of people doubted that would work, too...

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Back in 1975 I asked a friend with a maths degree to work out the costs. We came up with this -