The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is stuck in the past. NASA halted the planned first launch of its Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket last week, owing to a failure of one of its four first-stage rocket engines. Those RS-25 engines, which NASA decided to refurbish and use as a cost-saving measure, are left over from the space-shuttle program. Building a new launch vehicle with obsolete technology is emblematic of NASA’s approach to this late, overbudget program.
The Space Launch System was developed to replace Constellation, the President George W. Bush-era plan to repeat the Apollo moon-landing program. The giant booster NASA
