Finally, we know production costs for SLS and Orion, and they’re wild

NASA Inspector General Paul Martin is an independent watchdog for the space agency. Since his appointment as inspector general in 2009, Martin has tracked NASA's development of the Space Launch System rocket.

Although his office has issued a dozen reports or so on various aspects of these programs, he has never stated his thoughts on them.

The operational costs of the big rocket and spacecraft were revealed for the first time by Martin at the House Science Committee hearing. He took aim at NASA for their poor performance in developing these vehicles.

The operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch will be $4.1 billion. Martin essentially threw down his gauntlet and said NASA cannot have a meaningful exploration program based around SLS and Orion at this cost.

Breaking down the cost

At least the first four launches of the Artemis program will cost at least $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for an Orion spacecraft, and $300 million to the European Space Agency. Martin said that NASA confirmed the figures.

The costs do not include the tens of billions of dollars that NASA has already spent on the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The $4.1 billion figure cited by Martin would easily double if development costs were amortized over 10 flights of the SLS rocket.

That figure is much higher than NASA could have hoped for. Five years ago, a senior NASA official told Ars that the space agency would like to get its operational costs for a single mission down to $2 billion or 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465. The internal goal was said to be $1.5 billion.

According to Martin, NASA is obscuring costs that it is spending on the Artemis program and that, in aggregate, his office believes NASA will spend $93 billion on the program from 2012 to 2025.

It will be more difficult for Congress and the administration to make informed decisions about NASA's long-term funding needs without fully accounting for and accurately reporting the overall costs of current and future Artemis missions.