New Artemis mobile launcher takes shape amid uncertain future

Months after an alarmist review from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General, hundreds of construction workers seem out to prove their critics wrong as progress picks up steam on the Artemis program’s mobile launcher 2, the platform atop which future versions of the powerful Space Launch System rocket will launch.

Taking shape on a patch of concrete at KSC just north of the massive Vehicle Assembly Building, ML2’s steel structure is part of NASA’s current battle plan to support SLS launches beginning with Artemis IV currently on schedule for late 2028.

NASA OIG audits have warned of rising costs and growing delays for all facets of the Artemis program, and its future, including the Artemis II crewed flight planned for next year and the Artemis III moon landing in 2026, could be redefined by the direction of the incoming Trump administration.

“Our marching orders haven’t changed, and we can’t really speculate what the new administration is going to do,” said Darrell Foster, the ML2 project executive with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems based at KSC. “We know what our priorities are right now. We know what our mission is right now, and we’re staying focused on that.”

The lead contractor for the structure is Bechtel National Inc., headquartered in Reston, Virginia, but founded in San Francisco in 1898. The company has worked on massive projects over the years, including the Hoover Dam and the Channel Tunnel that connects England to France. The NASA contract, though, prompts a sense of pride in its employees.

“ML2 is an iconic project. It’s a signature project for Bechtel,” said David Leeth, the company’s deputy project manager for ML2. “We’re proud of all the projects that we have. … I’ve been on a lot of Bechtel projects, but this is space. This is something that’s really unique, and it’s right up at the top.”

The project, which was initially a $383 million contract awarded in 2019, had an original delivery date of 2023. The OIG audit released in August said the costs had already nearly tripled to more than $1 billion with the delivery date pushed to no later than November 2026.

“That’s our goal. We do have incentives in the contract, they’re objective milestone-based incentives that vary with the date,” Foster said.

Once Bechtel hands off, NASA’s EGS will have about a year to go through testing, including rollouts to KSC’s Launch Pad 39-B and back to the VAB, before teams would need to begin stacking the SLS rocket atop the ML2 inside the VAB in time to make the target launch date. So even with nearly two years out from planned liftoff, the timeline is tight.

The audit, moreover, had projected a dire warning about the project ballooning to a cost of $2.7 billion and delivery delays until 2029, but both NASA project officials and Bechtel officials took issue with the assessment, and their dissents were included in the audit.

“COVID definitely had an impact, and we’ve made adjustments accordingly on that, I would say, over the past year,” said Foster. “The cost and schedule is stabilized quite a bit, and we’re gaining momentum on the project.”

The pandemic raised costs and stretched timelines across all of NASA’s major projects.

The tower already stands at 80 feet, while just a few miles away at KSC are five of the seven modular steel blocks—each 40 feet tall and at least 400,000 pounds—ready to grow it even further toward its eventual 377-foot-tall height.

“The total project is (about) 63% complete,” said Leeth. “That’s everybody—engineering, procurement, construction, and we started construction in August, and we’re on track to meet the November 2026—or better—finish date.”

The major progress since construction began falls in line with what both NASA and Bechtel have pointed out is the company’s strength, actually getting its hands dirty with the work. It’s a fact they said was not adequately considered in the OIG audit.

“The best way to burn down cost and schedule risk is to get work done and complete work in a timely manner,” Foster said.

More than 300 what the team calls craft workers, such as welders, iron workers, carpenters and electricians, are already working night and day on the project, a number that is expected to grow to 600.

“Bechtel has worked very closely with the labor unions to make sure that we’ve got adequate labor on site and that those numbers are increasing over the next few months,” Foster said. “Because as we hit the peak of this project, it’s almost like climbing a mountain, and we’re kind of on the uphill still, but when we get to topping out the tower, we’ll probably be at peak labor.”

The hands-on labor is making strides at multiple work sites both on and off KSC property, but especially putting together the stackable modules housed under massive canopies in KSC’s industrial area.

“The mod yard, we call it, enables us to do work in parallel, so we can get the structural steel erected—the secondary steel, the floors and all of that, and start putting in—we call it the guts—the mechanical, electrical, utilities—all of that,” Leeth said.

The first of those final seven modules will be placed before the end of the year, with the help of a crane that will reach more than 500 feet tall.

Meanwhile, nearly 78% of the steel for the whole project is already on site, Leeth said.

“We have a goal to have it all on site by the end of March of next year, and we’re tracking to that currently,” he said, also noting he thinks the audit didn’t take into account just how much material Bechtel already had in hand.

“Every single item is on order in some fashion, and that greatly reduced our cost risk for ongoing procurement activities,” Leeth said.

Mike Costas, the general manager over the Defense and Space segment at Bechtel, pointed out the audit also focused on leadership changes on the project, but from his business’ point of view, that’s normal for his industry.

“Construction is different than manufacturing,” he said. “We have leaders that are really gifted at shaping the project, up front and the design phase of the job. … Then you start transitioning to the folks that are responsible for executing the job.”

And inherent in construction could be a more chaotic organization at the outset, much different to manufacturing, which is where he spent a good portion of his career before coming to Bechtel.

“I spent all those years working in manufacturing, and when I came to work, every day then I went to the same office building, went to the same office. The factory was attached to the office. I knew all those people who worked at the factory—the machinists, the welders, all that stuff, and then all the suppliers were pretty much the same,” he explained.

In construction, though, the offices are in different regional locations with different suppliers, a diverse and evolving workforce with different sourced commodities coming from all over the world.

“The site conditions are different. The communities are different. Everything about it is different, and so manufacturing, very well controlled, sterile environment. Construction, complete opposite,” he said.

That said, Bechtel has what Costas said are its core processes in training and communication, which translate down to the people chosen to help complete the job.

“Then we have these functional organizations that are constantly arcing in and checking everything: check, check, check, check, check,” he said. “So we built a lot of rigor and discipline in that, and we will not bid on a job that we can’t be successful.”

And safety remains not as many companies would claim as a No. 1 priority, but instead, it’s a core value embedded in the company’s culture, he said.

“Having that kind of mantra extends into the work that we do,” he said. “The people that are working on the mobile launcher right now understand the work they do will provide a safe environment for our astronauts in the future. Their personal safety carries into the flight safety capabilities that we’re building for our astronauts. There’s no daylight between any of any of those things.”

As far as delivering for its customer, Costas said timelines and costs remain on target.

“We’ve got completion in sight now,” he said.

Mobile launcher 1, which took a beating from the Artemis I flight in 2022, was originally constructed for the defunct Constellation program under President George W. Bush in the early 2000s. It sat unused for a year adjacent to the VAB before it was modified to support the first three Artemis missions, using the Block 1 version of the SLS rocket.

Artemis IV will use what is known as the Block 1B, a version of SLS that will have the power to send up to 84,000 pounds to the moon, nearly 25,000 pounds more than Block 1. The bigger rocket design was the reason ML2 needed to be constructed, which will end up being taller and wider than ML1.

The complexity in developing ML2, which will integrate more than 50 systems that work at the launch pad and the VAB, grew during the design phase after the launch of Artemis I. Among the changes were more durable requirements after seeing what the SLS did to the ML1 on launch, which produced more than 8.8 million pounds of thrust on liftoff generating temperatures above 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

The team working on ML2 say they hope to one day see it in action.

“We’re targeting that September ’28 launch date, and we’re going to do everything we can to get there. Bechtel’s got their timeline. We’ve got some testing we’ve got to do in between,” Foster said about the time between construction completion and stacking of SLS. “Right now, everything fits.”

Costas said he’s proud of the work being invested in the project.

“Many people that work in the space program are amazing. People are hard working, and they’re passionate about this work. They changed the world,” he said. “I’ve been around a whole bunch of firsts. I look forward to Artemis IV launching off this launch platform, and I know their team is doing everything in their power to make sure it’s done safely.”

A big question mark with the Artemis program will be whether Congress keeps funding all of its various parts, especially with the specter of SpaceX founder Elon Musk potentially driving part of Trump’s future space plans more toward his Starship project.

For now, though, plans push forward for SLS, the Orion spacecraft and the ML2, and remain the nation’s official roadmap for deep-space human exploration.

“The moon-to-Mars exploration approach hasn’t changed, and so until that does, we’re going to keep marching forward,” Foster said.

2024 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.