With a cost of roughly $4 billion per launch and the MASSIVE issue of having no reusability NASA has continued to move forward with its Artemis 2 mission. This was initially supposed to launch in 2024 but has slid to September 2025 at the earliest. Stacking has finally begun for this rocket and while it may sound like oh maybe they will be ready earlier that's not the case. The SLS has a ton of issues with some being based on just how the design of the SLS is and its components.

The crew capsule itself by far has the biggest red flag with the heat shield from the first mission showing unexpected damage and wear. NASA has recently said that they have figured this out but have not publically said what the fix is and if the whole Orion capsule itself has to be redone. At the rate that they are moving forward with this Starship will be ready to launch to the moon and that leads to a ton of questions about NASA possibly pulling the plug themselves before Congress does.