'I think it is just not sustainable.'
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Lori Garver:
Senior NASA people were there, but Senator Nelson was not — he tested positive for COVID the day before. The number three NASA person was there, who I know. I talked to many NASA people. And the overwhelming reaction was very positive to the book. I got so many women saying "this is really meaningful to me," and many in the Space Force and the military side of space saying, "this is really important, because this is happening on our side, too.
So even though I didn't want it to go forward, it had some potential. They added, what, seven years and over $10 billion dollars — $20 billion if you add Orion — just makes it so untenable that I don't think the public is going to find it to be something that is equal, much less beyond, what we did 50 years ago.
NASA looked at that $6 billion figure and said well, we think maybe $8 billion, let's give it a cushion. And then the Hill gave it a push and made it $10 billion. This thing is now, what, $22 billion or something?At the time I left NASA in 2013, I said "I think SLS is going to slip a year or two." NASA came back and said, "she's wrong, it's not slipping." And the head of SLS for Boeing said "it's ahead of schedule, across the board.
I think the rest of the industry is trying to figure out how they can make that system work in their world. And I'm frankly not sure how to exactly do that. But the spaceflight industry, and lots of what NASA does, is in my view not ripe for commercialization.