NASA May Cancel Boeing's Big $82 Billion Space Opportunity
"The report of my death was an exaggeration."
-- Mark Twain
First published more than 125 years ago, the great author's quip about his rumored demise applies well to the situation today with NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a 322-foot tall rocket designed to carry astronauts to the moon, and built by Boeing (NYSE: BA) and its partners.
I've written at least a half dozen stories, dating back as far as 2018, highlighting various political efforts to cancel the SLS program and its $82 billion worth of future NASA contracts. Just last year, for instance, the NASA Office of Inspector General called the SLS excessively expensive, while former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg lambasted it as likely unnecessary. And yet the program lives on.
But perhaps not for much longer.
Boeing sounds a warning note
About a week ago, Boeing SLS program manager David Dutcher called an all-hands meeting of the 800 or so employees working on the rocket and warned that as many as half their jobs could soon go away.
Admittedly, this is not Boeing's intention. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires large U.S. employers to give 60 days' notice to workers if there's a possibility the company will conduct a mass layoff. Dutcher's meeting was apparently called in response to this requirement, given the fear that the Trump administration may end Boeing's SLS contracts in March. Dutcher acted in the context of the ongoing work by the Department of Government Efficiency to cut federal spending, as well as the expected March release of the Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal, which may or may not include funding for the SLS.
However, canceling the SLS program doesn't seem to be part of NASA's plan, at least not yet. Soon after the Boeing meeting took place, NASA released a statement confirming that it sees the SLS as "essential" to Project Artemis. And a Bloomberg article published on Feb. 12 reported that Boeing thinks as few as 200 employees might end up getting laid off. Still, NASA couldn't assure Boeing that all its SLS project workers' jobs were safe.
"NASA defers to its industry contractors for more information regarding their workforces," said the space agency.
What does this mean for Boeing?
It's hard to overstate how great the risk is here for Boeing. Ars Technica's Eric Berger estimates that NASA spends about $3 billion a year developing and keeping the SLS program going, which is equal to about $1 out of every $8 that Boeing's defense, space and security division makes. And that's not even counting the $4 billion-plus cost each time this rocket launches.
At a minimum, if the SLS program were canceled (and not replaced by other rocket programs), that would save the government more per year than the sum of all the cuts made so far by the Trump administration based on the recommendations of Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency." (That's according to an estimate from Musk's own Grok AI, by the way).
Over the entire anticipated length of Project Artemis, with 20 missions planned, the revenues lost to Boeing and its partners could add up to $82 billion.
So whether you're a shareholder in Boeing, which oversees the SLS program, or in Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), which builds the rocket's solid rocket boosters, L3Harris (NYSE: LHX), which makes the main engines, or Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), which builds the Orion space capsule that it carries, ending the SLS program would sap billions of dollars of revenue from your space stock's top line.
Silver linings for space investors
That said, it's not all bad news for space investors. Canceling SLS wouldn't necessarily mean canceling Project Artemis. It doesn't mean America isn't going back to the moon -- just that it wouldn't be using SLS rockets to get there.
Funds originally designated to pay for fewer than two dozen SLS launches could, and likely would, be retargeted toward launches (maybe even more launches) by companies not named Boeing. Musk's SpaceX would presumably be a prime beneficiary, given that it already has NASA contracts to build two moon landers, and possesses at least one rocket (Falcon Heavy) capable of reaching the moon, as well as a second rocket (Starship) that's undergoing test flights.
Blue Origin is another likely beneficiary. Jeff Bezos' space company has already launched one New Glenn rocket with a payload to orbit capacity greater than the Falcon Heavy's. Blue Origin also has a NASA contract to produce landers for Project Artemis. And then there's Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR), which is building smaller landers, as well as Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB) and a whole host of other small space companies that would probably love to bank some of that sweet, sweet Project Artemis money.
Not all of these companies are publicly traded. SpaceX and Blue Origin, for instance, may still be years away from their IPOs. But you can already invest in Intuitive Machines and Rocket Lab today.
Come to think of it, if the SLS gets canceled, maybe you should.
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