…from the Space Access Society:

NASA HQ just gave in to prolonged Congressional pressure and announced a vehicle configuration for the SLS “Senate Launch System” heavy-lift launch vehicle project. The project will be run under traditional NASA practices; the cost multiplier over doing the job commercially will thus presumably start out on the rough order of fifteen times as expensive.

Note we said, start out. We see indications that the NASA organizational dysfunction that causes that huge cost multiplier is not a constant, but rather has been growing in recent years. We thoroughly expect that SLS project cost will grow and schedule stretch, just as Constellation program costs and schedule did.

We predict that at some point, it will be as obvious that SLS will never fly usefully as it was obvious that Constellation was going nowhere, and SLS too will be expensively cancelled. We hope that SLS will go away before it’s wasted even more scarce dollars (and impacted even more actual useful NASA projects) than Constellation – but we wouldn’t bet on it at this point.

The only hope is that people in Congress who don’t normally pay attention to space will start to notice, given the fiscal issues that the nation faces.

And on CCDev:

Human spaceflight will remain a risky business for a long time no matter who is in charge, the industry and FAA, or NASA. The only way it will become completely safe in our lifetimes is if it is made so expensive that we no longer do it at all. NASA getting their way on changing how CCDev is run may ultimately produce exactly that result.

Indeed.

I have some thoughts on cost overruns on federal transportation projects, including space transportation, over at Open Market.