NASA chief explains why agency won’t buy a bunch of Falcon Heavy rockets

Enlarge / William Gerstenmaier, chief of human spaceflight for NASA, speaks on the first day of Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium in 2017. (credit: NASA)

Since the launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket in February, NASA has faced some uncomfortable questions about the affordability of its own Space Launch System rocket. By some estimates, NASA could afford 17 to 27 Falcon Heavy launches a year for what it is paying annually to develop the SLS rocket, which won't fly before 2020. Even President Trump has mused about the high costs of NASA's rocket.

On Monday, during a committee meeting of NASA's Advisory Council, former Space Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale raised this issue. Following a presentation by Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of human spaceflight for NASA, Hale asked whether the space agency wouldn't be better off going with the cheaper commercial rocket.

"Now that the Falcon Heavy has flown and been demonstrated, the advertised cost for that is quite low," Hale said. "So there are a lot of folks who ask why don't we just buy four or five or six of those and do what we need to do without building this big, heavy rocket and assemble things like we did with the space station?