WASTED! NASA's gigantic $23B rocket Major Internal Failure. Starship to replace, Why not?

Fifteen years in development, 30 billion dollars spent, engines whose core design dates back more than half a century, and yet just one single flight to show for it. Yes, we're talking about NASA's Space Launch System, a rocket that is not only outrageously expensive and wildly inefficient, but also one of the most outdated launch vehicles NASA is currently operating. This is a fact that pretty much everyone in the space community already knows. But why does SLS still exist today? The answer is far more surprising than most people think. Let's break it all down in today's episode of AlphaTech. There was a time when the United States achieved something so extraordinary that even now it almost sounds unreal. From the moment NASA was founded to the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, only 11 years had passed. Yes, just 11 years. From 1958 to 1969, culminating in Apollo 11. But behind that seemingly magical timeline was something even more astonishing, an unprecedented level of national focus. At its peak, NASA was receiving nearly 4% of the entire U.S. GDP. The full weight of the American economy was thrown behind a single goal. Hundreds of thousands of engineers, scientists, and skilled workers spread across hundreds of private companies were all pulling in the same direction. And out of that effort came the Saturn V powered by the legendary F-1 engines. Those engines were so powerful that in terms of sheer raw thrust, a single F-1 still dwarfs SpaceX's modern Raptor 3 about 680 tons of thrust versus roughly 280 tons. But despite that incredible power, the F-1 became obsolete almost immediately after the Apollo program ended. And the reason was simple, it was not reusable. Each engine was thrown away after a single flight, and that came at an enormous cost. At the time, one F-1 engine cost more than 2 million U.S. dollars, a staggering sum by 1960s standards. That realization triggered a fundamental shift in thinking at NASA. The Space Shuttle program was born as a direct response to the lessons of Apollo. If spaceflight was ever going to become sustainable and more affordable, the cost per launch had to come down, and that meant flying hardware again and again, not discarding it after one use. At the heart of that idea was the RS-25, the Space Shuttle main engine. The RS-25 was a cryogenic masterpiece burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, producing around 186 tons of thrust per engine. Far weaker than the F-1 in raw power, but critically it was reusable. That single design choice became the core reason the shuttle program, while expensive, could still be considered a real technological success. Then, after the shuttle was retired in 2011, the paradox returned this time in one of NASA's modern programs, SLS. NASA took these reusable RS-25 engines and mounted them onto a fully expendable one in Dunn Rocket. Wait, what? How is this any different from resurrecting the same expensive, outdated Saturn? Five philosophy all over again. So, yes, at a fundamental level, that's exactly what's happening. NASA's justification is that they wanted to reuse the 16 RS-25 engines left over after the Space Shuttle program ended. 16 engines enough for just four missions from Artemis 1 through Artemis 4. Fine. Let's assume they actually use all 16. Even then, the maximum amount of money NASA saves is only around $600 million. Now, put that number next to the reality of SLS. As of today, NASA has already spent roughly $30 billion on this rocket, a fully expendable vehicle powered by engines designed in the 20th century, plagued by chronic liquid hydrogen leaks, and repeatedly delayed before almost every single flight. So, when you step back and look at the full picture, the costs, the design, choices, the operational headaches, if there were just one word to describe SLS, only one word fits outdated. On Artemis 1, all four RS-25 engines had already flown a combined 25 Space Shuttle missions. For Artemis, two NASA is using three flight-proven engines with a combined 22 previous shuttle flights, plus one engine that has never flown but was built largely from shuttle-era components. Technically, these engines are extraordinary. The RS-25 is a cryogenic stage combustion masterpiece with a specific impulse exceeding 450 seconds, one of the most efficient chemical rocket engines ever built. But here's the contradiction. These engines were designed to be reused dozens of times, removed, inspected, refurbished, and flown again. On SLS, they fly once and then sink into the ocean along with the core stage. That isn't just wasteful, it's a clear sign of technological stagnation. While SpaceX is pushing the Raptor toward hundreds of flights per engine, the RS-25 on SLS is still rooted in 50-year-old technology. And starting with Artemis 5, the situation gets even worse. NASA must contract L3Harris Technologies to build brand new RS-25 engines from scratch, each costing roughly $145 million. Why is it so expensive? Because production rates are extremely low, and the program never takes advantage of mass manufacturing, the very mechanism SpaceX uses to drive Raptor costs down. And then there are the boosters. The two massive solid rocket boosters, or SRBs, generate over 75% of SLS's liftoff thrust. Their design is almost a direct inheritance from the 1980s Space Shuttle era, when each booster consisted of four solid segments. SLS stretches that design to five segments, increasing thrust by about 20%, and total impulse by 24%. The boosters also feature a redesigned nozzle lighter and safer asbestos-free insulation and updated avionics. But look deeper, and most of the technology is still old. They continue to use the same P-B-A-N solid propellant developed decades ago. The steel casings are pulled straight from shuttle-era inventory, some of them actually flew on shuttle missions. Even the manufacturing processes remain largely unchanged, carried over from the Ares and Constellation programs. The biggest operational change. These boosters are no longer recovered. There are no parachutes anymore. After burnout, both SRBs fall directly into the ocean, fully expendable. Despite incremental upgrades, SLSSSRBs are widely considered obsolete. They never transitioned to lighter composite materials, never adopted modern solid propellants, and remain fully dependent on Northrop Grumman's legacy supply chain. As shuttle hardware stocks continue to run out, NASA is now forced to manufacture new components, but still to the original design, not a truly modern one. That real modernization known as BOLE, the Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension Program, is being developed separately and only for the future Block II version of SLS. Now let's shift to a completely different perspective and look at SpaceX's Starship. This is a vehicle developed in the same era as SLS, yet it embodies a philosophy so modern that the contrast is almost jarring. While SLS still leans heavily on technology rooted in the 1970s and 1980s, Starship was designed from day one as a fully reusable system built around a simple but radical idea. Fly, often fly cheap and fly big. This is what Elon Musk and SpaceX believe is the real turning point, transforming spaceflight from a rare ceremonial event into something routine. Start with raw power. With the super-heavy booster, Starship has already surpassed SLS in liftoff thrust. 33 Raptor engines generate over 20 million pounds of thrust at sea level, more than double the 8.8 million pounds produced by SLS Block I. That makes Starship the most powerful rocket ever built, surpassing even the legendary Saturn V. Payload capability tells the same story. Starship is targeting up to 200 tons to low Earth orbit in a fully reusable configuration far beyond SLS, Block I's roughly 95 tons and still well ahead of the 130 tons projected for future SLS, Block II, or Block III variants. With on-orbit refueling, Starship can deliver over 100 tons directly to the lunar surface, something SLS and Orion simply cannot do. And let's be clear, SLS is just the launcher. Orion itself is essentially a deep space capsule, no lunar landing capability whatsoever. But the biggest difference, the reason Starship feels genuinely modern, is reusability. Starship is built so that both the super-heavy booster and the Starship vehicle fly again. The booster returns to the launch site, gets caught by the tower's chopsticks, undergoes rapid inspection, and flies again. The goal is dozens of flights per vehicle and eventually hundreds. SLS is the complete opposite. It is fully expendable fly once and everything is gone. Years of engineering effort, precision, and craftsmanship vanish into the ocean after a single launch. The result is an extremely slow launch cadence, one flight every two years, driven by long manufacturing timelines, complex supply chains, and staggering costs. And that brings us to cost. Depending on the estimate, each SLS launch can approach $4 billion, despite using legacy hardware, low production rates, and zero reusability. Starship, even while still in testing, is targeting something radically different. SpaceX estimates $2-10 million per flight in an optimized reusable configuration. Even in a temporary expendable mode, costs are expected to stay around $100 million, still orders of magnitude cheaper than SLS. Elon Musk has repeatedly said, the long-term goal is to drive launch costs down to just a few million dollars per mission, enabled by rapid reuse and mass production. So the question becomes unavoidable. If SLS costs billions per launch just to support a handful of lunar missions, is it really worth it? Starship, despite its early struggles, improves with every flight. Each test shortens the path forward towards sustained lunar presence and ultimately toward Mars. That's something even Apollo at its peak could only dream of. Sometime around 2028, or possibly later, if delays continue the way they have. So far, the next evolution of NASA's heavy-lift rocket is expected to appear, SLS Block 1B. Compared to the current version, the biggest changes are concentrated in the upper stage. Instead of the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, which relies on a single RL-10 engine, NASA is introducing the all-new exploration upper stage. EUS is powered by four RL-10 C-3 engines. Its liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks are significantly larger, enabling more reliable multiple restarts, a critical capability for complex lunar trajectories and deep space missions. The result is a substantial jump in performance, while SLS Block 1 can deliver roughly 27 tons to translunar injection. Block 1B increases that to about 38 tons in the crewed configuration and up to 42 tons in the cargo variant. And yet, no matter how you frame it, it is still an expendable, outdated rocket. So why does it continue to exist? The core answer isn't technical. It's jobs. SLS and Orion support tens of thousands of workers spread across nearly every U.S. state, from Boeing facilities in the Pacific Northwest to Northrop Grumman operations in Utah, down to countless smaller subcontractors scattered across hundreds of congressional districts. A NASA economic report from 2019 estimated that the program supported more than 69,000 jobs and injected roughly $14 billion into the U.S. economy. People often say, in for a penny, in for a pound. And that phrase may perfectly capture NASA's current situation. If the agency wants to sustain the Artemis campaign, it won't just be paying for a single moon mission. It will be committing to a long chain of missions, each one demanding tens of billions of dollars, potentially adding up to hundreds of billions over time. Because Artemis isn't a one-off launch. It's an ongoing program, and the deeper it goes, the more expensive it becomes. According to NASA's Office of Inspector General, in 2024, development and production costs for S, LS Orion, and the Exploration Ground Systems were projected to reach roughly $55 billion by the end of 2025. And after all of that investment, SLS has flown just once. Each launch is widely estimated to cost around $4 billion, including Orion. By contrast, a Falcon Heavy mission today comes in at under $150 million, a price that already accounts for development and infrastructure. The gap is not marginal. It is structural. In contrast, SLS is fully expendable, meaning every core stage and booster is discarded after a single mission. With so few flights, those enormous development costs cannot be spread across a large launch cadence. As a result, the effective cost of putting payload into orbit with SLS remains dramatically higher than what the commercial market now offers. On pure lift capability, SLS is undeniably powerful. The Block 1 variant can send roughly 95 metric tons to low Earth orbit, and the future Block 2 is expected to reach around 130 metric tons. For context, Delta IV heavy tops out below 26 metric tons, while Falcon Heavy exceeds 63 metric tons to LEO. So yes, SLS wins on raw payload capacity, but the premium attached to that performance is enormous. And that imbalance between capability and cost is exactly why the program continues to face intense scrutiny over its economic efficiency. According to reports in early February 2026, the White House Office of Management and Budget directed NAST to temporarily withhold portions of its science funding, even though Congress had just passed the FY 2026 budget allocating $7.25 billion to the Science Mission Directorate. The official explanation was vague. No detailed justification was offered publicly. But the broader context matters. Back in the initial FY 2025 budget proposal, the administration had already floated a significant reduction to NASA's overall funding, cutting the agency's top-line budget by roughly 24% to about $18.8 billion. The science portfolio would have taken an even sharper hit, nearly a 47% reduction, dropping from around $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. The argument at the time was fiscal discipline and reprioritization. Critics, however, saw it as a shift of resources toward high-cost human exploration programs, including SLS and Artemis. So, when science funding was later paused despite congressional approval, many observers interpreted it as a continuation of that earlier strategy. Whether framed as budget management or political maneuvering, the practical outcome was the same flagship science missions suddenly found themselves in limbo, while the most expensive exploration systems continued moving forward. Many critics argue that SLS was never truly optimized for sustainable lunar exploration or long-term deep space architecture. Instead, they see it as a politically engineered program designed to funnel large amounts of federal funding into key congressional districts. Because the supply chain spans dozens of states, SLS supports more than 69,000 jobs nationwide and generates tens of billions of dollars in economic impact, numbers lawmakers frequently cite when defending the program. From this viewpoint, finishing the rocket too quickly would actually threaten the flow of funding. Delays and overruns are not just accidents, they become features of the system. The contract model reinforces that perception. Under cost-plus agreements, contractors are reimbursed for expenses and then paid additional profit on top. NASA's inspector general has repeatedly criticized this structure, calling it a systemic problem because it weakens incentives to reduce cost or accelerate timelines. The longer development stretches, the more money flows. As a result, SLS development consumed more than $29 billion between 2011 and 2024, roughly $35 billion adjusted for inflation, far exceeding early projections. What makes it even more ironic is that multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, have attempted to scale back or phase out SLS. The FY 2026 proposal, for example, suggested ending the program after Artemis III and transitioning to cheaper commercial alternatives. Yet Congress has consistently intervened to preserve it. If that really is the reality behind the program, would you still support the continued development of SLS? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. At the heart of this new lunar race, the real structural weakness of SLS isn't just its staggering cost or questionable economic efficiency. It's the fact that the vehicle is entirely expendable. Every time SLS launches, the core stage is lost. The solid rocket boosters are gone. Major structural elements are discarded after a single flight. Nothing returns for refurbishment. Nothing is reused. Nothing helps drive down the marginal cost of the next mission. There is no opportunity to amortize that massive development investment across dozens or hundreds of launches. Each flight essentially resets the cost curve. That reality makes the sustainability problem much harder to ignore. This is why the words of NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman resonate so strongly when he said, When you have a fully reusable vehicle, you can send it anywhere to the moon, past Mars. It wasn't just a technical observation. It was a strategic statement about the future of spaceflight. Isaacman has consistently emphasized commercial lower-cost solutions and has implicitly contrasted them with legacy expendable systems. His argument is straightforward. Only full reusability unlocks high launch cadence, operational flexibility, and dramatically lower cost per mission. You move away from the launch once and discard model of SLS, or even Saturn V, and toward an aviation-like loop launch, land inspect, refly. He even framed it vividly in an interview on The Sean Ryan Show, arguing that space travel becomes truly transformative only when no part of the rocket is thrown away. That is the moment when access to orbit begins to resemble commercial air travel spacecraft flying repeatedly, routinely, with economics that make ambitious exploration sustainable rather than symbolic. In that context, it almost sounds like a quiet endorsement of SpaceX's Starship, the vehicle that is attempting to turn Isaacman's philosophy into hardware. Unlike SLS, Starship was designed from day one to be fully reusable. The super-heavy booster returns for a controlled landing. The upper-stage Starship itself is also intended to come back intact, ready for inspection, refueling, and rapid turnaround. That architectural choice changes the economics completely. Current public estimates suggest Starship's launch cost could fall into the tens of millions of dollars once it becomes operational at scale. Early flights will not immediately match Falcon 9's maturity or pricing, but the long-term target often cited by Elon Musk is in the $2-10 million range per launch. If even partially achieved, that would be tens, potentially hundreds of times cheaper than an SLS flight. On performance, Starship is designed to deliver roughly 100-150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit comparable to or exceeding SLS, depending on configuration. More importantly, it enables orbital refueling. Multiple tanker Starships can transfer propellant in orbit, allowing a fully-fueled vehicle to depart for the Moon, Mars, or beyond. That capability is precisely what makes the phrase send it anywhere technically plausible rather than aspirational. Now consider the logistics of building a sustained lunar base. Habitats, power systems, rovers, life supports, infrastructure, spare parts, scientific payloads. This is not a one-launch endeavor. It requires repeated high-cadence heavy-lift capability. If SLS were to fly 10 times at roughly $4 billion per mission, that approaches $40 billion in launch cost alone. Meanwhile, U.S. National debt is nearing $39 trillion and continues to climb, making fiscal sustainability a central political issue. There is also a structural funding difference. SLS is a government-owned, taxpayer-funded program with no independent revenue stream. It exists solely to execute missions defined by Congress and NASA. Starship, by contrast, is being developed by SpaceX, a commercial entity that generates revenue from satellite launches, Starlink, and other services. While it benefits from government contracts, its core development is driven by a private company pursuing long-term market expansion. The deeper question, then, is not just which rocket is more powerful. It is which economic model scales. An expendable, low-flight-rate, government-funded, super-heavy launcher or a high-cadence reusable system integrated into a commercial ecosystem. And this is where the argument shifts from rockets to ecosystems. If Starship or any fully reusable system succeeds in making access to orbit routine, then low-Earth orbit stops being a destination and starts becoming an economy. Frequent human presence in LEO could unlock large-scale microgravity manufacturing, advanced biomedical research, space-based clean energy experiments, next-generation space telescopes assembled in orbit and rapid iteration of new technologies. Once launch cost and cadence improve, experimentation accelerates. And with that acceleration comes demand. You suddenly need spacecraft operators, orbital construction, specialists, propellant depot managers, spaceport, logistics teams, life support, engineers, radiation, medicine experts, and in-space manufacturing technicians. These are high-skill, high-value jobs tied not just to exploration but to ongoing operations. Some people wouldn't just visit orbit. They would stay for extended periods, helping build and maintain permanent infrastructure. Space would gradually shift from being the domain of government astronauts and a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals to a professional frontier that qualified civilians can realistically enter. The downstream effects on Earth could be even more profound. Many astronauts who have experienced the overview effect, seeing Earth as a fragile sphere suspended in darkness, return with a renewed commitment to planetary stewardship. That psychological shift can influence policy culture and long-term thinking. Historically transformative transportation systems reshape civilization. Commercial aviation alter geopolitics defense strategy, global trade, and cultural exchange if spaceflight follows a similar trajectory. The technological spillover alone in materials, science, robotics closed. Loop life support energy systems could ripple back into terrestrial industries.