And NASA (as in Gerst) isn’t happy with GAO’s (accurate) “unnecessarily negative” criticism of its and Boeing’s performance.

[Noon update]

Muilenburg responds with typical BS:

“The first rocket is now about 80% assembled, and we’re going through the detailed system integration,” he said. “These are very complex, sophisticated machines, so the technology itself is a challenge. I think it’s manageable. It’s work we know how to do. But it’s tough, challenging work, and we have to do it in a way that ensures safety in the end.”

Muilenburg said having consistent political and funding support for such a big space project was at least as challenging.

“We’ve seen that to date on the Space Launch System,” he said. “If we’re going to get back to the moon by 2024, we can do that, but we can’t if we don’t have stable, consistent support and funding. So the political and funding side of this, I would say, is actually the greater risk.”

The notion that SLS hasn’t had “consistent political support and funding” is beyond mendacious.