NASA finally acknowledges the elephant in the room with the SLS rocket | “You know, you’re right, the flight rate—three years is a long time.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/nasa-finally-acknowledges-the-elephant-in-the-room-with-the-sls-rocket/
10 Comments
>The Space Launch System rocket program is now a decade and a half old, and it continues to be dominated by two unfortunate traits: It is expensive, and it is slow.
>The massive rocket and its convoluted ground systems, so necessary to baby and cajole the booster’s prickly hydrogen propellant on board, have cost US taxpayers in excess of $30 billion to date. And even as it reaches maturity, the rocket is going nowhere fast.
>You remember the last time NASA tried to launch the world’s largest orange rocket, right? The space agency rolled the Space Launch System out of its hangar in March 2022. The first, second, and thirds attempts at a wet dress rehearsal—elaborate fueling tests—were scrubbed. The SLS rocket was slowly rolled back to its hangar for work in April before returning to the pad in June.
>The fourth fueling test also ended early but this time reached to within 29 seconds of when the engines would ignite. This was not all the way to the planned T-9.3 seconds, a previously established gate to launch the vehicle. Nevertheless mission managers had evidently had enough of failed fueling tests. Accordingly, they proceeded into final launch preparations.
>The first launch attempt (effectively the fifth wet-dress test), in late August, was scrubbed due to hydrogen leaks and other problems. A second attempt, a week later, also succumbed to hydrogen leaks. Finally, on the next attempt, and seventh overall try at fully fueling and nursing this vehicle through a countdown, the Space Launch System rocket actually took off. After doing so, it flew splendidly.
You’re just not going to get anything done at that cadence. Nothing exciting in the Artemis program is going to happen. The entire Apollo launch cadence was inside of a decade.
By design. Senate Launch System is a make-work project, always was, always will be.
I know everyone says hydrogen but I am sure other hydrogen rockets have not had this level of issue. Ariane 5 was the mainstay of western satellite launching for years with hydrolox first stage. Saturn V had hydrogen upper stages, as did some deep space upper stages like Centaur. Shuttle scrubbed, i.e. rescheduled launch dates about 90% of its actual launch dates though I think that includes launches which had multiple reschedules.
I suspect Shuttle was ususually difficult and SLS more so.
I wonder if Berger had this one queued up in hopes that there would be some sort of delay.
Old wooden ships often took three years each to build, to last *many* voyages with luck and smarts.
Our lunar ships also take three years each to build, to last just *one* voyage with luck and smarts.
Progress?
Why is everyone surprised this thing is a lemon? I remember reading about its issues years ago, and all the disappointment that this was what was chosen and then the extra disappointment when the lunar gateway was scrubbed.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[ECLSS](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3k98th “Last usage”)|Environment Control and Life Support System|
|[EDL](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3k98th “Last usage”)|Entry/Descent/Landing|
|GSE|Ground Support Equipment|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3kfal1 “Last usage”)|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3kgqje “Last usage”)|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3k7o46 “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LLO](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3kgqje “Last usage”)|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)|
|[NRHO](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3kgqje “Last usage”)|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[RFP](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3knrgz “Last usage”)|Request for Proposal|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3kn3ka “Last usage”)|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SSME](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3kdtsp “Last usage”)|[Space Shuttle Main Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine)|
|[TLI](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3k98th “Last usage”)|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver|
|[WDR](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3jxfbv “Last usage”)|Wet Dress Rehearsal (with fuel onboard)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[hydrolox](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3jwtzi “Last usage”)|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[scrub](/r/Space/comments/1qvrcu9/stub/o3jzp0n “Last usage”)|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
—————-
^(14 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1qvk6v0)^( has 48 acronyms.)
^([Thread #12132 for this sub, first seen 4th Feb 2026, 16:32])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
It’s wild that people think calling something a jobs program is somehow a criticism. I’d vote for a UBI, which is just a jobs program without the job. The fact that a jobs program can also produce a spacecraft capable of flying humans around the moon is fantastic! What’s the problem?
Orion has the same problem. It’s overly complicated and overly expensive. We need Orion to be something like a work truck that is quick to put together and get on the pad, and has enough capability to serve lots of different mission profiles, and can be put through an early “proving out” program where it could be run through its paces in a series of flights before tackling more difficult missions. Instead it’s exactly the opposite.
I don’t begrudge the money spent on SLS and Orion, but we the people have not gotten anywhere near the proper value out of these programs, instead the money has gone into the hands of bloated aerospace giants and an ocean of useless middle management bureaucracy.