The last gasp of 20th-century NASA

In Politics by Michael Rae

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

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