NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine defended the Space Launch System program in Alabama today after an audit that found the big new rocket program plagued by cost overruns and delays.

“It’s without question we’re behind schedule and over cost,” Bridenstine told reporters after touring the United Launch Alliance rocket plant in Decatur. “It’s also without question that NASA has already put in place a lot of the things necessary to get us back on track.”

Bridenstine was asked about the audit released Oct. 10 by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General. The audit said the rocket being managed at Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center will cost taxpayers $8.9 billion by the end of 2021 - double the amount originally planned.

SLS is the biggest rocket NASA has built since the Saturn V, and the agency plans to use it to carry astronauts back to the moon. It will also carry to the moon parts of a mini-space station NASA wants to assemble in lunar orbit as a base for future exploration. The first SLS launch without a crew is now set for 2020.

“I can’t emphasize enough that what NASA does are things that have never been done before…,” Bridenstine said. “It’s sometimes difficult to assess what the cost is going to be and how long it is going to take. And we have to invent things along the way.”

“This is an important part of making America great,” he said of SLS, “and we’re going to double down on it and we’re going to get it right. We’re going to the moon and we’re going to go on to Mars.”

Bridenstine repeated his support for the big rocket to a roomful of rocket and space professionals in Huntsville at the closing luncheon of the annual Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium on Space.

“Write that down, ‘Bridenstine supports SLS,’” he said from the podium to reporters covering the luncheon.

The question of SLS’s future came from the audience because Bridenstine had talked about NASA’s plan to develop “open, reusable space architecture” with common features like docking bays so commercial companies and allies could join future space missions. SLS is not reusuable.

While in North Alabama, Bridenstine toured the ULA plant and saw the Atlas V rocket the company will use to launch American astronauts into space as part of NASA’s commercial crew program.

“It’s almost ready to go…,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said of the first, uncrewed launch. “We’re all pretty excited to build it, as you can imagine. We do catch people out here at night this polishing it when we’re not watching.”

Bruno and Bridenstine also both mentioned a reason to travel into deep space that is getting more emphasis in recent months.

“We are standing on the verge of a new era where we are going to see an expanded and permanent human presence in space and begin to develop the tremendous natural resources that are there just a scant week’s journey from Earth,” Bruno said. ”There are objects in cislunar space that contain a thousand years of Earth’s industrial metal production. We’re looking at post-scarcity human journey, and this is the very beginning of that journey.”