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NASA’s Last Rocket
The United States is unlikely to build anything like the Space Launch System ever again. But it’s still good that NASA did.

Members of Congress had no particular design in mind, but they demanded that NASA rummage through crates of old space shuttle parts whenever possible to build this thing, and required that it launch by 2016.

Mandated to build the big rocket, NASA cobbled together exploration programs that would use it. First, it was an asteroid rocket. Then a Mars rocket. Now, it is an Artemis moon rocket. In any event, the Space Launch System is billions of dollars over budget and five years beyond its compulsory launch date.

The setbacks and slow pace that have plagued the Space Launch System stand in stark contrast to what else has happened in rocketry in the past decade.

There is great value in that. The big rocket won’t be needed forever. It might be needed only long enough to get the first woman on the lunar surface. The commercial launch sector may be ready to take it from there.

It is highly unlikely that NASA will ever again rely on rockets it has built on its own. The Space Launch System is the end of the line. If the only purpose it serves is giving the nation the time and confidence to get a private, reusable vessel spaceborne, it will have been a success.

Whether the Space Launch System program ends next year or next decade, unlike the end of the space shuttle or Saturn 5, it will not be the end of a chapter, but the end of a book. NASA will be out of the rocket business. When the next generation goes to Kennedy Space Center and sees a giant old Space Launch System booster on display, the tour guide will say, “They don’t make ’em like that anymore,” and that will be true — literally.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/s...ch-system.html