Blue Origin manufactures an engine of comparable power and size, the BE-4, for less than $20 million. According to Martin, when calculating the projected cost savings of the new RS-25 engines, NASA and Aerojet only included material, engineering support, and touch labor, while project management and overhead costs are excluded.Īnd even at $70.5 million, these engines are very, very far from being affordable compared to the existing US commercial market for powerful rocket engines. However, NASA's inspector general, Paul Martin, said this claim was dubious. For example, NASA recently said that it is working with the primary contractor of the SLS rocket's main engines, Aerojet, to reduce the cost of each engine by 30 percent, down to $70.5 million by the end of this decade. While NASA certainly deserves credit for talking about the excessive cost of the SLS rocket-a fact that has been pointed out by critics for more than a decade but largely ignored by NASA officials and congressional leaders-it is not at all clear that they will be able to control costs. "NASA has made some progress toward implementing these strategies, but it is too early to fully evaluate their effect on cost." Can NASA really control costs? "NASA, however, has not yet identified specific program-level cost-saving goals which it hopes to achieve," the authors write. Setting aside that some of these goals sound suspiciously like corporate speak, the report makes clear that these are aspirational aims for now.
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