Trevor Mahlmann
On Thursday, top officials leading Boeing’s Space Launch System program, including David Dutcher and Steve Snell, held an all-hands meeting for the more than 1,000 employees who work on the rocket.
Officials announced a significant number of layoffs and redeployments of people working in the program, according to two people familiar with the meeting. They offered a number of reasons for the cuts, including a shift to the right in the timelines for the Artemis moon missions, which will use NASA’s SLS rocket.
Later Thursday, in a statement to Ars, a Boeing spokesperson confirmed the cuts to Ars: “Due to external factors unrelated to our program performance, Boeing is reviewing and adjusting current staffing levels in the Space Launch System program.”
Be late, be strong?
For nearly a decade and a half, Boeing led the development of the main stage of the massive SLS rocket that NASA intends to use to launch the Orion spacecraft for manned lunar missions.
The deal has been lucrative for Boeing and has come under fire for its size over the years as NASA spends tens of billions of dollars developing a rocket that reuses the Space Shuttle’s main engines and other components. Also, the rocket was originally supposed to debut in late 2016 or 2017, but didn’t actually fly for the first time until November 2022. And NASA’s Inspector General has described Boeing’s management of the SLS rocket program as “weak” at times. .”
However, when the SLS rocket debuted a year and a half ago, it did quite well in flying the unmanned Orion spacecraft to the Moon. After this mission, NASA declared the rocket “operational” and Boeing moved to manufacture the vehicle for future missions that would carry astronauts to the Moon.
So, in a certain sense, these cuts were inevitable. Boeing required a lot of resources to design, develop, test and write software for the rocket. Now that the development phase is over, it is natural for the company to reduce development activities for the main phase.
While Boeing’s statement did not provide details, sources told Ars that the layoffs could eventually cover hundreds of workers. They will be distributed primarily to the company’s missile facilities in Alabama, Louisiana and Florida. The cuts will affect both the core stage program and the Exploration Upper Stage program, a new upper stage for the missile that is beginning to move from development to production.
Waiting for other items
When Boeing mentions “external factors,” it’s referring to glide times for NASA’s Artemis Program. In January, space agency officials announced nearly a year of delays for the Artemis II mission, a crewed lunar mission, until September 2025; and Artemis III, Moon Lander, by September 2026. None of these tables are set in stone. Additional delays are possible for Artemis II and possibly Artemis III if NASA sticks to current mission plans.
While the SLS rocket is ready for the current schedule by avoiding disaster, other elements are in doubt. For Artemis II, NASA still hasn’t fixed the heat shield problem with the Orion spacecraft. This must be resolved before the mission gets the green light to continue next year.
The challenges for Artemis III are greater. This mission requires NASA to have a lunar lander provided by SpaceX via Starship, in addition to spacesuits for the lunar surface provided by Axiom Space. Both of these elements remain firmly in development.
In addition, NASA is struggling with budget problems. For the first time in more than a decade, the agency is facing budget cuts. “With less money, we have to make some very hard choices,” space agency Administrator Bill Nelson told Congress this week. Among these could be attempts to use future SLS funding to power other elements of Artemis.
One of the people familiar with Thursday’s internal Boeing meeting said the space agency came to the company earlier this year and that, in fact, Boeing will receive less funding with SLS development halted. The company was given the option to “stretch” the funding it would receive or take a year off due to delays in the Artemis mission. Boeing chose to extend the funds, which was the driver of the cuts this week.
It would be easy, but unfair, to blame SpaceX and Axiom for delays to future Artemis missions. Congress created the SLS rocket with an authorization bill in 2010, but Boeing actually received funding for related work. It belongs to 2007. In contrast, NASA did not begin funding the Starship lunar lander until late 2021, and the Axiom spacecraft until 2022. In some ways, these developments are as technically demanding as the work of the SLS rocket.