Northrop’s Charlie Precourt: Contractors Should Consider ‘Affordability’ for SLS Rocket Program

Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of propulsion at Northrop Grumman, has said contractors need to consider affordability, survivability and sustainability as they work on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket program, Ars Technica reported Monday.

“We’ve got to make sure we’ve got our mindset on affordability, and I don’t think it’s too early for all of us on this panel, as well as our counterparts at NASA, to start thinking about that,” he said during a panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society’s Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium in Huntsville, Ala.

“All of us need to be thinking about [how] our annual budget for this will not be what it is in development,” Precourt, a former astronaut, said of SLS.

The report said 1.1K contractors across 43 states are working on the SLS rocket that is expected to launch with the Orion spacecraft in 2020 as part of NASA’s space exploration program.