It gets worse. From the article: "Total acquisition costs now exceed $428 billion, nearly double the initial estimate of $233 billion, with projected lifetime operations and maintenance costs of $1.727 trillion."
Much like the SLS, it seems that it is more a jobs program to dump money into select congressional districts than a project actually focused on deliverables.
I think it's helpful to focus on dollars per citizen. $428 billion means I spent a bit over $1000 on this failure. My family spend a few thousand dollars. Adjusted for income (I pay above-average taxes), it probably cost my family a minimalist car.
The 1.7 billion price tag is around $5k per citizen. That could mean a lot to a lot of families.
You could even get more than $5k per citizen out of it if you had put it into something that nets a return either directly or indirectly. Infrastructure projects like renewables, road upgrades, internet upgrades and so on. If you need busy work there is a lot of useful work to be done.
Much like the SLS, it seems that it is more a jobs program to dump money into select congressional districts than a project actually focused on deliverables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Funding_hi...