400 Employees Fired: NASA SLS finally Canceled!? Boeing's New Big Trouble...

Taxpayers can rejoice at this news. Our money sucker, NASA's Space Launch System, would be cancelled in the near-term future. Indeed, Boeing, the primary contractor, is preparing to pull the plug, potentially resulting in 400 layoffs. But, will powerful forces in Congress save this money pit? Or is this finally the beginning of the end for SLS? Stay tuned to find out. Anyway, our next goal is 100,000 and we need your support to get there. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do. We appreciate your help. Thank you. Breaking news. Boeing warns employees working on the SLS program that up to 400 of them could lose their jobs as the new administration considers cancelling the program. Specifically, in the announcement on February 7th, Boeing SLS employees were informed that the company was making preparations to cut up to 400 jobs from the program because of revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations. The specific positions being considered for elimination were not announced, but would account for a significant fraction of the overall SLS workforce at the company. Job cuts may occur in April 2025. David Dutcher, Boeing's vice president and program manager for the SLS rocket, added that Boeing's contracts for the rocket could end in March. To be honest, the controversy surrounding the Artemis program and the SLS, a key element of the program, has been around for a long time. In the last November, Ars Technica space journalist Eric Berger, who has deep sources in the space industry, revealed, To be clear, we are far from anything being settled, but based on what I'm hearing, it seems at least 50-50 that NASA's Space Launch System rocket will be cancelled. Not Block 1B, not Block 2. All of it. There are other ways to get Orion to the moon. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and head of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration, has criticized Artemis' current approach, stating in December that it was a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program, and that something entirely new is needed. Meanwhile, he continues to advocate for Mars exploration, even calling the moon a distraction. He emphasized his desire for SpaceX to help lead the charge for human exploration on Mars, in large part by using the company's Starship rocket. Following the sixth launch of the rocket in November, he posted to his social media site, I am highly confident that we can send several uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years. If those ships don't increment the crater count on Mars, then crewed ships can be sent in four years. The discussion around Mars also gained increased attention when President Donald Trump said during his inauguration speech that the U.S. will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars. We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars. In addition, critics argue that NASA should discontinue the Space Launch System program, due to its high costs, with each launch exceeding $2 billion, not including payload or ground system expenses. NASA has been spending around $3 billion annually on the SLS and its ground systems. These critics suggest that maintaining the SLS for lunar landings would hinder progress, because contractors like Boeing, benefiting from cost-plus contracts, would be encouraged to prolong the work to secure continued funding. Thanks to its footprint since the dawn of space exploration, Boeing won the core stage SLS contract, with ease based on its prior contract for Constellation. However, what they showed was very shameful. We did notice very poor contractor performance on Boeing's part. There's poor planning and poor execution, NASA Inspector General Paul Martin said. We saw that the cost-plus contracts that NASA had been using worked to the contractors rather than NASA's advantage. An Inspector General report in 2018 projected the core stage cost would increase to at least $8.9 billion through 2021, more than double the initial projection of $4.2 billion in June 2014. NASA estimated a single SLS block, 1B, is estimated to cost at least $2.5 billion to produce, excluding systems engineering and integration costs. As a result, the price tag of the SLS program in general has ballooned to $23 billion by 2022, three times an initial $6.2 billion by 2018. Simultaneously, the SLS rocket ended up flying its first launch in Artemis more than six years later than originally intended. Following that, the next Artemis missions are also getting delayed. On the other hand, NASA and its contractor involved in the Artemis lunar exploration campaign have urged the new administration to keep the current architecture, arguing that it still provides the fastest way to return humans to the Moon. This partly stems from the fact that SLS is the only rocket capable of carrying humans from Earth to lunar space. It offers high escape velocities to send more mass to deep space destinations and can reduce transit time. Therefore, abandoning SLS could leave the United States behind other countries, such as China, in the race to the Moon. Lockheed Martin's Kirk Shireman urges his workforce to stay focused despite potential changes with the new administration. At least every four years, or likely every four years, an administration changes and there's uncertainty, Shireman said. The best thing we can do is keep your head down and work as hard as you can and do the things that our nation tasked us to do. Acting Administrator Janet Petro has urged the White House to allow NASA to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions, using an early version of the SLS rocket before the program is canceled. As the controversy intensified, Eric Berger reported in December that the likelihood of canceling the SLS had shifted from a 50-50 chance to a 75-25 probability in favor of cancellation. Such a good news! At present, NASA has not announced any revisions to the Artemis program and a panel of NASA. The Trump administration has also not made any public changes to Artemis since taking office on January 20. Industry officials are pressing ahead with preparations for the Artemis II mission, the first crewed SLS Orion flight, scheduled for April 2026. NASA pushed back the date of that mission multiple times, mainly due to questions about the readiness of the Orion spacecraft's heat shield, which experienced unexpected char loss during the Artemis I mission. NASA ultimately determined that gases were able to build up within the ablative outer layer, called avcoat, which were not able to vent and dissipate as expected. Matt Ramsey, Artemis II mission manager at NASA, said on January 29, The agency has challenged us to do better, and we're in the process of figuring out what better looks like, he said, with a work-to launch date coming in the next few weeks. There are also the routine issues that occur daily on the program, Ramsey added. There's a whack-a-mole every day where we find problems, fix problems, and move on to the next day. With the heat shield issue resolved, he said, the key factors driving the launch date will be work assembling the vehicle. Crews are currently stacking segments of the SLS's twin solid rocket boosters, a process that should be complete in the next two to three weeks, said Brad McCain, deputy program manager for ground operations at Amentum. Once the vehicle is fully assembled, it will be rolled out to Launch Complex 39B for a tanking test. The schedule for that tanking test is a little bit variable, said Charlie Blackwell Thompson, NASA Artemis launch director, but would be no earlier than the fall. Beyond Artemis II, NASA is also looking into the future of the Artemis program, starting with Artemis IV. NASA plans to use the Block 1B version of the SLS rocket, which requires a new mobile launcher and Boeing's Exploration Upper Stage EUS. The flight-worthy EUS is expected to arrive at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in late 2026 for testing, including hot-fire tests, either late that year or in early 2027. John Shannon, the vice president of Boeing Exploration Systems, said, What you'll see roll out first is the structural test article, which looks just like the EUS. We'll take it to Marshall Space Flight Center and do all the mean things that we did to all the other elements and put it through its paces, Shannon said, and then we'll go to Stennis and do the green run. Unlike the Artemis I core stage green run, this go-around they will do a couple of firings on purpose this time and we'll end up swapping out engines. Those engines will not be vacuum-rated engines. They'll be sea-level rated engines, Shannon explained. We'll swap out the engines and then send it off to the Cape for the Artemis IV flight. Assuming a launch of the Artemis II mission in April 2026, it would be a roughly 14 to 16-month turnaround before the planned launch of Artemis III in 2027, mid-2027. Production on the heat shield blocks began in October 2024, and for its part, Amentum, the company responsible for integrating the pieces of the SLS rocket and going through checkouts as part of NASA's consolidated operations, management, engineering and test contract, is working to establish the ability to move through a launch campaign as quickly and efficiently as possible. As far as a timeline, we would hope to do better than 14 months. To be quite honest, you really can't use Artemis I's timeline as a baseline because of so many different things that we did and the unexpected damage in everything we fixed for Artemis II. That delayed everything getting started, Brad McCain, the deputy program manager for Amentum said. If the hardware performs as it should and we get what I would call the expected response from the infrastructure, then 14 months is sufficient time to turn around. I think the target is 12 to 13 months. Yeah, 12 months nominal. We actually have Artemis V and parts of VI in manufacture at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans," Lockheed Martin's Kirk Shireman added. We are processing and building multiple vehicles right now and some of the things that we're focused on now is how do we accelerate the pace at which we can build and test this vehicle and get ready to fly. It really is a big focus for us. Anyway, frankly, it's honestly unclear where Artemis and SLS are headed. We just know that efforts to cancel the SLS or significantly alter the Artemis program structure are similar to a situation that occurred in 2010 when the Obama administration tried to end the Constellation program, which ultimately led to the creation of the SLS. The ripple effect of canceling SLS is already here. Boeing just gave 400 employees an unexpected promotion to full-time Netflix reviewers. This reflects the balance between representative democracy and potential bias towards wealthy industries. Nevertheless, anything could change during Trump's second term with the role of Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency. So, how about you? Either cancel SLS or keep it. If you were in Congress, which one is your option? Let me know in the comment section below.