> Assuming that's all true, it will only limit NASA if they force missions to use it.

That is literally why the Artemis program is designed as it is, the program is designed about the rocket and capsule, rather then the other way around.

Many at NASA wanted a different architecture after Shuttle, but congress had no interest in that.

Artemis is big, but NASA is much more than that. If a Flagship mission says "no thanks", that's a serious customer speaking directly. EC is about the same size as the current Artemis program.

Although it is notable IMO that EC was legally required to launch on SLS, to help justify its existence... Until there was some 11th hour maneuvering and Congress decided to rewrite the law saying that it was only mandatory to launch on SLS if SLS if SLS passed the vibe check

> EC is about the same size as the current Artemis program.

EC cost estimates are currently about 4-5 billion for the whole program while a single SLS launch is ~2 billion.

The whole SLS/Orion program runs at few billion each year and it's already spent more than 10x the entire cost of Europa Clipper.

The rocket is the harder part in this case though. SLS was hard enough as it was, recycling existing parts. Any alternative wouldn't have been easier.

I disagree. Alternatives would actually have been easier and cheaper.

Go look at some of the studied NASA internally did, their result was the same, other approaches would have been better and cheaper in the long run.

The Shuttle derived architecture won because of politics.

Which architectures would have been cheaper?

Here is thread with a whole bunch of information you can go threw:

https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceLaunchSystem/comments/kt1vlf/r...

Basically a Saturn V like clone was considered.

And those studies referenced also didn't consider many other viable options. Commercial providers were planed to be able to bid as well and SpaceX and ULA would have considered making bids.

Something NASA also didn't consider is using the Merlin engine, an engine that actually existed and was already going into mass production at that time. That would have been an alternative to F-1 and would have been ready sooner.

You also might be interested in this presentation from 2011:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweLWCBHpUE%3Ft%3D0

What funny about that presentation is how much time he spends talking about cost and how cost control is the most important thing and if they can control cost NASA shouldn't even make its own rocket. And of course SLS did the exact opposite of controlling cost.

Commercial providers can and do fail just as hard. I'd also question cost estimates based on nothing actually built or seriously planned through.

Again, its not just commercial. The other internal options were also better.

And even if you assume they fail, the bids were expected to be in the 2-5 billion $ range.

Not in the 20 billion+ $ range. And those bids would have been for a 130 ton rocket, not a 90 ton rocket like SLS is.

> I'd also question cost estimates based on nothing actually built or seriously planned through.

You can question it, but those kinds of estimates are what NASA bases it choices on. And NASA picked what their own estimations suggested was the worst thing.