On Thursday, senior Boeing officials who lead the Space Launch System program, including David Dutcher and Steve Snell, held an all-hands meeting for more than 1,000 employees who work on the rocket.
According to two people familiar with the meeting, officials announced that there would be a large number of layoffs and reassignments of program staff. They cited several reasons for the cuts, including that the schedule for NASA’s Artemis lunar mission, which will use the SLS rocket, has shifted to the right.
Later Thursday, a Boeing spokeswoman confirmed Ars’ cuts in a statement: “Due to external factors unrelated to the performance of our program, Boeing is reviewing and adjusting current staffing levels in the Space Launch System program.”
Better late than never?
For nearly a decade and a half, Boeing has led key-stage development of the giant SLS rocket that NASA plans to use to launch the Orion spacecraft for its manned mission to the moon.
The deal was lucrative for Boeing and has been widely criticized for years for its largesse, as NASA spent billions of dollars building a rocket that reused the main engines and other components of the Space Shuttle. The rocket was originally scheduled to debut in late 2016 or 2017, but it didn’t actually fly until November 2022. NASA’s inspector general has at times described Boeing’s management of the SLS rocket program as “poor”. “”
However, when the SLS rocket was launched a year and a half ago, it performed exceptionally well in carrying the unmanned Orion spacecraft to the Moon. After that mission, NASA declared the rocket “operational” and Boeing began building vehicles for future missions that would carry astronauts to the Moon.
So in some ways these cuts were inevitable. Boeing needed a lot of resources to design, develop, test, and write software for the rocket. Now that the development phase is complete, it is natural for the company to reduce early stage development activities.
It was not specified in Boeing’s statement, but sources told Ars that the cuts could eventually affect hundreds of employees. It is primarily used at the company’s missile facilities in Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida. The cuts include the core stage program as well as the exploration upper stage program, a new upper stage for the rocket that begins the transition from development to production.
Waiting for other items
When Boeing says “external factors,” it’s referring to the delayed schedule of NASA’s Artemis program. In January, space agency officials announced the postponement of the nearly year-long Artemis-2 mission, a manned lunar flyby, until September 2025. and Artemis III, landing on the Moon, by September 2026. That deadline hasn’t been set either. There could be more delays for the Artemis 2 mission and possibly Artemis 3 if NASA sticks with current mission plans.
While the SLS rocket will be ready for the current schedule barring a disaster, other components are in question. As for Artemis II, NASA has yet to solve the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield problem. It needs to be cleared before the mission gets the green light next year.
For Artemis III, the challenges are even greater. To do that, NASA needs a lunar lander — which SpaceX is providing with Starship — as well as a lunar spacesuit from Axiom Space. Both components are still in the development stage.
Additionally, NASA is facing budget problems. For the first time in more than a decade, the agency is facing budget cuts. This week, Space Agency Administrator Bill Nelson told Congress, “With so little money, we have to make some tough decisions, including finding future SLS funds that can be used to support other components of Artemis.”
The space agency contacted the company earlier this year and effectively said Boeing would receive less funding if SLS development was halted, a person familiar with internal Boeing meetings said Thursday. The company was given the option of “stretching” the funding received due to delays in the Artemis mission or taking a one-year hiatus. Boeing decided to raise money, and that was the trigger for this week’s cuts.
It would be easy but unfair to blame SpaceX and Axiom for delaying future Artemis missions. Congress created the SLS rocket with licensing legislation in 2010, but Boeing has already received funding for related work. Since 2007. In contrast, NASA only began funding work on the Starship lunar lander in late 2021 and the Axiom spacesuits in 2022. In some ways, these developments are just as technically demanding as the work on an SLS rocket, if not more so.