NASA Continues to Ignore GAO On SLS And Orion

NASA Human Space Exploration: Integration Approach Presents Challenges to Oversight and Independence

"The approach that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using to integrate its three human spaceflight programs into one system ready for launch offers some benefits, but it also introduces oversight challenges. To manage and integrate the three programs--the Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle; the Orion crew capsule; and supporting ground systems (EGS)-- NASA's Exploration Systems Development (ESD) organization is using a more streamlined approach than has been used with other programs, and officials GAO spoke with believe that this approach provides cost savings and greater efficiency. However, GAO found two key challenges to the approach:

- The approach makes it difficult to assess progress against cost and schedule baselines. SLS and EGS are baselined only to the first test flight. In May 2014, GAO recommended that NASA baseline the programs' cost and schedule beyond the first test flight. NASA has not implemented these recommendations nor does it plan to; hence, it is contractually obligating billions of dollars for capabilities for the second flight and beyond without establishing baselines necessary to measure program performance.

- The approach has dual-hatted positions, with individuals in two programmatic engineering and safety roles also performing oversight of those areas. These dual roles subject the technical authorities to cost and schedule pressures that potentially impair their independence. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board found in 2003 that this type of tenuous balance between programmatic and technical pressures was a contributing factor to that Space Shuttle accident."

- Previous SLS posts

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