President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) included provisions for billions more dollars towards a notoriously over budget and behind schedule space launch vehicle while slashing other space programs.
The OBBBA gives nearly $10 billion dollars towards the Boeing Space Launch System (SLS) and related projects, according to the bill’s text. The SLS had its first launch delayed from 2016 to 2022, putting subsequent launches years behind schedule while running at least $6 billion over budget, according to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Inspector General report from 2023.
The SLS has long been viewed by some space policy experts as a money sink owing much of its existence to keeping aerospace-related jobs in states like Florida, Texas, and Alabama, a former government official with extensive space policy experience told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The SLS project, despite billions in government funding, lags behind private sector alternatives from companies like SpaceX in terms of cost and overall space-worthiness, bringing into question the efficacy of the tax dollars spent on the program.
“The plan was, let’s retire the space shuttle, take the savings and start building something else,” the official told the DCNF. “Some of the stuff on the SLS is actually old space shuttle hardware. So we created this Frankenstein, so to speak, of a rocket.”
The SLS, which was commissioned to Boeing in 2014, was originally designed to be America’s next flagship vehicle to send astronauts to the Moon, and establish a permanent U.S. presence on the celestial body.
The rocket was given the pejorative name the “Shelby Launch System” in space policy circles, named after former Republican Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby who was the project’s biggest proponent, the official told the DCNF. The SLS employs over 28,000 people in its total construction and operation, many of which are in Alabama.
The OBBBA allocated $4.1 billion to support the Artemis IV and V missions, while also allocating $20 million for the Orion capsule system used in conjunction with the SLS, according to the bill’s text. Artemis IV, which is planned to establish a lunar base for U.S. astronauts, is scheduled to launch September 2028, while Artemis V is scheduled for March 2030, according to NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget request.
The SLS alone has so far run American taxpayers $23.8 billion, while the Orion capsule has cost $20.4 billion in total, according to The Planetary Society.
“Everybody in the industry, everybody in the space community, would privately acknowledge this is a very expensive rocket, probably not exactly a good deal for the taxpayer,” the official told the DCNF.
Artemis II, NASA’s next mission to land astronauts on the Moon using the SLS, was delayed from September 2025 to April 2026. Artemis III, aimed at establishing a moon base, was also delayed until 2027.
NASA audited the Boeing Space Launch System (SLS) project in August 2024 and concluded that Boeing had a lack of “trained and experienced aerospace workers” working on the SLS, which NASA determined to be a major factor in delaying construction. Notably, Boeing previously experienced a series of quality control failures for their 737 Max jets, which were involved in two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that combined to kill 346 people.
In addition to adding more funding to the SLS, the White House Office of Budget Management (OMB) is pushing NASA to slash its budget by nearly 25%, cancelling over 40 unmanned science missions in its fiscal year 2026 budget.
Potential alternatives to the SLS include the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets from SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company. The Falcon Heavy provides heavy lift capabilities similar to the SLS, but unlike the SLS, SpaceX’s offerings are reusable, and come at a significantly lower price tag while not relying on government funding.
“The combination of OMB-driven budget cuts and congressionally mandated spending on SLS is especially pernicious. Retiring SLS would have enabled NASA to save billions each year, freeing up the funds needed to return astronauts to the moon and keep America’s space probes operating,” James B. Meigs, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote Tuesday in a piece for City Journal. “The de facto current plan instead forces the agency to spend more money on the infamously wasteful SLS program, while gutting its highly successful science missions.”
NASA told the DCNF that it had proposed to the White House to retire the SLS after the Artemis III Launch in 2027, instead soliciting commercial options to move the lunar mission forward.
“We are aware of the provisions included in the One Big Beautiful Bill relating to NASA,” a NASA spokesperson told the DCNF. “The agency will put all enacted funding to good use and continue to work diligently to execute the President’s vision for the future of space as we usher in the Golden Age of human space exploration and innovation.”
Boeing did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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