The wildly popular online chatbot ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm this year by trying to explain why Boeing’s Space Launch System (SLS) is the world’s cheapest rocket. The SLS, the most powerful practical rocket available, successfully sent NASA’s Orion spacecraft to the moon late last month, but the project itself has often been criticized for being too expensive.
The solid rocket booster separated from the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket during its first flight last year while traveling at 4,000 miles per hour. Image/NASA
However, the chatbot defended the SLS, claiming that the rocket was reusable and that Boeing was able to spread its development costs over several years because the U.S. government-funded it. Apparently, ChatGPT says the SLS is fully reusable, something because it got some facts wrong.
Ars Technica’s Eric Burger decided to let ChatGPT burn his brain for once, and ChatGPT’s take on the SLS and its launch costs emerged. He asked ChatGPT to pretend to be the CEO of Boeing and write a message to the company’s employees explaining why its SLS rocket is the most affordable rocket in the world.
The robot very honestly wrote out a detailed memo in which some facts were correct and others were completely wrong. It begins by describing ideas about the cost of the SLS as “misconceptions” and then makes unrealistic feature claims for a rocket that took a decade to develop before it launched late last year.
