Who knew that liquid hydrogen could have leak issues?

Notice the subtle shade from Jared: ““With more than three years between SLS [Space Launch System] launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges.”

[Update a few minutes later]

Stephen Clark’s take.

[Late-morning update]

The Artemis vision began with President Trump, but the SLS architecture and its components long predate his administration, with much of the heritage clearly traced back to the Shuttle era. As I stated during my hearings, and will say again, this is the fastest path to return… https://t.co/bu0SvThwS9

— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman (@NASAAdmin) February 3, 2026

It’s not even the fastest path, but it is probably the one with lowest risk. We could get back to the Moon faster and at lower cost, but we’d have to accept more risk than NASA and Congress have demonstrated the ability to do.

Bob Zimmerman says to take them off the flight.

NASA would never allow SpaceX to do something like this.

But it’s a tremendous waste of money either way.

[Friday-afternoon update]

Eric Berger reports on a meeting at NASA to discuss the issue. Jared owns it now.

[Bumped]

[Midnight update]

Charlie Camarda responds.