One of the biggest criticisms of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft is that they will be too expensive to fly. Namely—while the large rocket and sizable capsule appear to be more-than-capable vehicles that could form the core of a deep-space exploration program—will there be any money left after producing them for NASA to actually go and explore? Until now, this has been a question the space agency has offered only vague assurances about.

But on Thursday, when Ars sat down to interview NASA’s Bill Hill inside the Michoud Assembly Facility, where the SLS core stage and Orion are assembled, the NASA manager was notably forthcoming. “We’re just way too expensive today,” Hill acknowledged. “It’s going to take some different thinking and maybe a little bit more risk taking than what we’re wanting to do today.”

Hill should know. As deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, he is the NASA headquarters official responsible for the development of SLS, Orion, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. Hill said he has given managers of each of those three programs some targets for production and operating costs once the vehicles move out of the development phase and into production.

Top number

“My top number for Orion, SLS, and the ground systems that support it is $2 billion or less,” Hill told Ars. “I mean that’s my real ultimate goal. We were running at about three-plus, 3.6 billion [dollars] during the latter days of space shuttle. Of course, there again, we were flying six or seven missions. I think we’re actually going to have to get to less than that.”

Ars has learned that the agency’s ultimate goal for annual production and operations costs is about $1.5 billion.

With the first test flight of SLS and Orion not coming before the fall of 2018 at the earliest—and a second flight not until the early 2020s—the programs will remain in the development phase for at least the next five to seven years. By the mid-2020s, however, NASA would like to fly the SLS rocket at least once a year—sometimes with Orion, other times with scientific payloads bound for the outer solar system or human spaceflight hardware. By the end of the 2020s, Hill said, NASA would like to reach a flight rate of two SLS launches per year.

These are ambitious cost and flight-rate goals considering the scale of these programs. But if the space agency could meet them, it would go a long way toward quelling two of the biggest concerns about SLS and Orion: their ongoing costs and low flight rate. Low flight rates, independent reports by the National Research Council and others have warned, are simply not sustainable over the long term.

Production and operations costs

Production costs are those associated with the manufacture of the launch vehicle, including materials, production labor, factory test and inspection, and integration performed at the manufacturing sites. Operations costs are those associated with the operation of the launch vehicle after completion of manufacturing, including green run testing, transportation, launch site assembly, flight operations, post flight analysis, and sustaining engineering.

Production and operations costs—P&O in NASA's acronym laden jargon—of $2 billion or less would leave a significant amount of money within NASA’s budget for human missions to the vicinity of the Moon, to its surface, or eventually crewed missions to Mars. In fiscal year 2016, NASA received $3.7 billion for exploration systems development, essentially the SLS, Orion, and ground systems budget. The number is likely to grow to $4 billion before the decade’s end.

If it could eventually spend half of that on deep space habitats, landers, surface living quarters, and myriad other systems, the agency could have the beginnings of a viable program in deep space. Such a program might become even more robust by the late 2020s, when NASA’s human exploration program could potentially add much of the International Space Station’s $3 billion budget wedge to deep space missions.

These remain big ifs, of course, as NASA struggled to contain these production and operations costs during the space shuttle era. However, outside of the small meeting room where Ars met with Hill, on the vast floor of the Michoud rocket factory, there were some signs that the agency has sought to control costs where possible. In this big facility where the agency once built the large external fuel tanks for the space shuttles, NASA is now assembling the larger still “core stage” of the space launch system rocket, the backbone of the rocket that contains its liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants, avionics, and main engines.

During the space shuttle days, about 1,200 people worked at 40 stations to assemble the shuttle's external tank, which was a relatively simple design when compared to to the SLS core stage. Today, about 400 people with Boeing, the prime SLS contractor, work at a handful of stations to assemble the core stage. It represents a sign— a small but tangible one—that NASA might yet wrangle its big rocket and spacecraft costs into submission.