NASA Rejects Idea of Humans on First Flight of New Rocket

NASA won’t fly humans on its first launch of the Space Launch System, the largest rocket in the agency’s history. While technically possible, the effort would have required as much as $900 million in new funding and pushed the first flight’s schedule to as late as June 2020, NASA officials said Friday.

NASA’s acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot Jr., requested the study in mid-February amid the Trump administration’s stated desire to hasten America’s return to space. An internal group determined relatively quickly that changing the existing strategy would be technically feasible but result in the need for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding and disrupt schedules for the SLS rocket and the new Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.