posted 02-07-2025 06:05 PM               

"To align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations, today we informed our Space Launch Systems team of the potential for approximately 400 fewer positions by April 2025," a Boeing spokesperson told Ars. "This will require 60-day notices of involuntary layoff be issued to impacted employees in coming weeks, in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. We are working with our customer and seeking opportunities to redeploy employees across our company to minimize job losses and retain our talented teammates."

The timing of Friday's hastily called meeting aligns with the anticipated release of President Trump's budget proposal for fiscal year 2026.

Further, even if the President calls for its end in his budget request, it is really up to Congress to decide the rocket's fate.

Multiple sources said there has been a healthy debate within the White House and senior leadership at NASA, including acting administrator Janet Petro, about the future of the SLS rocket and the Artemis Moon program. Some commercial space advocates have been pressing hard to cancel the rocket outright. Petro has been urging the White House to allow NASA to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions using the initial version of the SLS rocket before the program is canceled.

posted 02-09-2025 05:25 AM            

Elon Musk is the ideal disruptor needed to overhaul U.S. manned spaceflight, from the current lumbering Artemis programme into something reasonably accomplishable.

If SLS is dumped then Orion could conceivably ride on either Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, Super Heavy and Vulcan for launches -- subject to modifying those rockets and their pads.