JCM 4/4/2026 6:25:20 AM

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NASA's Artemis Program Is a Monument to Government Waste. It Can Only Go Up From Here.

By the time President Barack Obama took office, the Constellation program was already on the way to cancellation; the new administration declared the program "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation." When the Shuttle program retired in 2011, no vehicle was set to take its place. So in 2010, Congress mandated that several legacy aerospace companies create the Space Launch System (SLS), both to take over the missions that the shuttle had been servicing and to provide for future space missions.

As development began on the rocket, the projected budget cost through 2017 was $18 billion, a number that would soon start growing. Early in development, each launch was projected to cost $500 million, a number very optimistic in hindsight: According to the White House's 2026 budget proposal, an SLS launch costs about $4 billion. Through last year, the total cost of the program has exceeded $60 billion.

Occasional Reader 4/4/2026 3:52:36 PM

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Who knew that our first trip back to the moon after over half a century would wind up involving an emergency related to Uranus?