NASA's Boeing moon rocket set for 'once-in-a-generation' ground test - National Post

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“This is a once-in-a-generation kind of test,” Jim Maser, Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Senior Vice President of Space, told Reuters. “This will be the first time four RS-25s fire together at the same time.”

The expendable super heavy-lift SLS is three years behind schedule and nearly $3 billion over budget. Critics have long argued for NASA to transition from the rocket’s shuttle-era core technologies, which have launch costs of $1 billion or more per mission, to newer commercial alternatives promising lower costs.

By comparison, it costs as little as $90 million to fly the massive but less powerful Falcon Heavy from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and some $350 million per launch for United Launch Alliance’s legacy Delta IV Heavy.

While newer, more reusable rockets from both companies – SpaceX’s Starship and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan – promise heavier lift than Falcon Heavy or Delta IV Heavy potentially at lower cost, SLS backers argue it would take two or more launches on those rockets to launch what SLS could carry in a single mission.

Reuters reported in October that President-elect Joe Biden’s space advisers aim to delay Trump’s 2024 goal, casting fresh doubts on the long-term fate of SLS just as SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin scramble to bring rival new heavy-lift capacity to market.

NASA and Boeing engineers have stayed on a ten-month schedule for the Green Run “despite having significant adversity this year,” Boeing’s Space Launch System manager John Shannon told reporters this week.

Shannon cited timeline hiccups that included five tropical storms and a hurricane that swept over Stennis, as well as a three-month closure after some engineers tested positive for the coronavirus in March. (Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Rosalba O’Brien)

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2021-01-16 22:06:08Z
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