Analysis: Boeing, Northrop face obstacles in commercializing flagship US rocket
stevecrox@kbin.social to 
Space@kbin.social – 6 points – 
reuters.com
NASA's plans to turn over its flagship rocket to contractors Boeing and Northrop Grumman to find more buyers and bring down costs faces steep hurdles thanks to meager demand even from the Pentagon and a sprawling supplier network.
SLS was driven to an entirely unsustainable cost by Boeing (and ultimately by the Congressional forces that dictated Shuttle- or Constellation-era components). Getting the resulting mess off of NASA’s books and onto the party responsible for the problem is all to the good.
However. This puts Boeing in a monopolistic position for human space flight; CCP can get crew to LEO all day long, but only Orion can go further. (SpaceX stans chill out, we know Starship is super cool but they aren’t a competitor for Orion until they can get 8 launches off the pad and solve cryogenic fuel transfer). There’s no force driving the cost down, and that’s not a recipe for savings.
So. Rocket will probably stay the same cost, maybe some token savings but not enough to offset the sunk cost of NASA-internal work to develop the flight software and integrate the vehicle. In the absence of another launch vehicle, Orion gets tied to that unsustainable cost and stuck with that insufficient launch cadence.
I honestly can’t figure out who wins with this.