The shuttle program under the FATS plan did not restart smoothly, and the same was true for the SLS.
After a month of overtime efforts, the new core stage of the SLS rocket was designed and delivered for manufacturing, but the SLS rocket still had numerous problems.
This time, its enemy was cost.
As the successor to the Shuttle program, the SLS rocket aimed to be cheaper. The initial cost per launch of the Shuttle was about 500 million US dollars. The goal of the SLS plan was to have a greater payload capacity than the Shuttle—expanding from over 30 tons to 130 tons—with a cost of about 2 billion US dollars per launch, a higher cost-performance ratio, and lunar landing capability.
The dream was grand, but reality was skeletal.
