An undertrained and inexperienced workforce at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans is a key reason for a “degraded state” of quality control on the Artemis project that’s set to send astronauts to the Moon and then Mars in coming decades, according to the space agency’s internal watchdog.

In a scathing report issued Thursday, NASA’s Office of Inspector General cited rocket maker Boeing, which employs more than 1,000 people at Michoud, for dozens of problems on its Space Launch System rockets that are being assembled there.

An upgraded version of the SLS rocket is more than seven years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget, and federal monitors found 71 problems on the Michoud-based project ranging from minor to potentially serious.

“This is a high number…for a space flight system at this stage in development and reflects a recurring and degraded state of product quality control,” said the report, which covered a two-year period from 2021 through 2023.

Economic development leaders have long touted the Artemis program as one of the New Orleans area’s bright spots. But the report said the problems at Michoud are largely due to a “lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing,” which it said was “in part due to Michoud’s geographical location in New Orleans and lower employee compensation relative to other aerospace competitors.” NOLA.com