The shuttle’s main engines were designed in the 1970s, before the first shuttle launch in 1981. In the 1990s and 2000s, NASA created a new series of upgraded engines upgraded with high emphasis and better reliability, but the engines used architecture as the previous generation.
Although RS-25 engines are indeed old, they are among the highly performing and highly reliable US rocket engines. When they flew to the space shuttle, the engines were reusable. Now, on the space launch system, NASA will destroy engines on every mission.
This means that NASA must buy another 25 RS 25 engines from L3 Horse Aerogate Rocketdine at an amazing price of L3 100 million per unit. 2023 Report NASA Inspector General. The Watch Dog predicts that each SLS rockets will fly with new brand RS 25 engines.
In straight terms, these high costs will affect any effort to create a sustainable campaign of deep space search, written by the Inspector General in 2023. “Given the excessive costs of the Artemis campaign, the failure to achieve good savings will be a significant obstacle to the stability of NASA’s deep space human search efforts.”
NASA laid Of the first of 255 engines in this new lot Earlier this year, in the preparation of a test firing at the test stand in Mississippi to prove that the fifth space launch system is ready to launch on the rocket. It assumes that it ever flies.
The Trump is considering the administration Cancellation of the SLS program In favor of less expensive trading rockets, in favor of the axis towards human missions on Mars. If the White House proposes cancellation, and the Congress agrees with it, a natural point to abolish the SLS program may be after the flight of Artemis III, which will be NASA’s first lunar landing mission after Apollo.
This will end the SLS program even before the first start of the big SLS upper phase. NASA Inspector General Reported, only estimates will cost $ 7.7 billion.