Stars and Stripes By Christian Davenport 6/9/2022
For years NASA has struggled with ballooning costs of the rocket and spacecraft it wants to use to send astronauts to the moon. Now, it's got significant problems with an obscure, but vital, piece of hardware used to transport and launch the rocket: a tower of scaffolding known as a mobile launcher.
In a scathing report issued Thursday, NASA's inspector general said that a second version of the mobile launcher, needed to accommodate a taller version of the rocket, is expected to cost at least $1 billion — more than two times the original contract value that NASA awarded in 2019. The IG said it would take an additional 2 1/2 years to build.
NASA already has built a mobile launcher for its Space Launch System rocket, at a cost of $668.7 million. That program also suffered enormous cost increases after NASA's Constellation program was canceled, meaning the agency had to redesign the tower to fit a different rocket, the SLS.
But that mobile launch tower will have to be replaced after just three missions because NASA plans to use a different version of the SLS, one with a more powerful upper stage that would extend the rocket's height by some 40 feet, for later trips to the moon in its Artemis lunar campaign. The later version of the SLS will be capable of delivering 40 percent more payload to the lunar surface.
More:
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2022-06-09/nasa-report-moon-effort-6289022.html
