I, along with many others with an engineering background, have been deeply infuriated watching NASA bet the entire future of the Artemis lunar program on SpaceX’s Starship. It never made any sense. It was like they took Musk’s propaganda hook, line, and sinker and refused to engage a single brain cell’s worth of critical thinking. Even when it became crystal clear that Starship was a million miles away from being close to ready, NASA stood by its favourite ketamine billionaire. It’s almost like SpaceX has corrupted NASA’s administration (…and, yeah, they more or less have). But brainwashing and corruption aren’t a permanent solution. They wear off as soon as reality starts hitting home, and it looks like NASA have just realised the gargantuan mistake they have made.
This all revolves around the 2027 Artemis III mission, which plans to land astronauts on the Lunar surface for the first time in 55 years.
It is a rather complex mission. NASA’s SLS rocket will launch a crew of four on board NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Orion will then enter NHRO, a kind of distant lunar orbit. Then, a private lunar lander will rendezvous with Orion and take two of the crew down to the lunar south pole. The lander will then bring them back to Orion, and the crew will land safely back on Earth on board Orion.
Why not use a single spacecraft/lander like with Apollo? Well, this multi-stage mission allows for a greater payload to the surface than a single rocket can deliver. What’s more, the eventual plan is to have a lunar space station orbiting the Moon, with its own lander travelling back and forth between it and the lunar surface. That way, future missions just dock with this space station and don’t have to carry their own lander. The only thing they would need to carry would be their crew, their gear, and fuel for the lander. This dramatically reduces the payload and cost needed to conduct a lunar mission in the long run.
But NASA didn’t want to design this lander, as thanks to budget cuts and the annoyingly expensive way they are forced to tender internal projects (which is a conversation for another day), they didn’t have the funds for it. So, in April 2021, two years before SpaceX had ever even flown the radical Starship, let alone proved it could actually work, NASA handed Musk a $2.9 billion exclusive contract to use a modified Starship upper stage, known as the Human Landing System (HLS), as this lander.
But, as you may have noticed, Starship development isn’t exactly going well, and that has delayed the Artemis III mission multiple times. It was initially scheduled for 2024 but has been pushed back to mid-2027. Not to mention that, as I will explain in a minute, it is highly doubtful that Starship will even be close to ready by then. Who would have guessed? Oh yeah, me and any other engineer with a modicum of self-respect.
Now, with China surging ahead in the new lunar space race, it seems NASA has finally had enough of waiting for Musk to somehow turn his bullshit into reality.
The acting NASA chief, Sean Duffy, recently announced he was opening up the lunar lander contract, and he didn’t mince his words. Duffy said, “The problem is, they’re behind. They’ve pushed their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China.” He went on to say, “I’m gonna open up the contract,” and that he will “let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin.”
When you look at what SpaceX has achieved over the course of its 11 test flights, you can see what he means!
More than half of these flights ended in critical failure. Most of them had zero payload, and only two successfully took a dummy payload into space. That payload was only 10% of the promised payload capacity, thanks to Starship having serious thrust issues, meaning it physically can’t carry more than that. Additionally, because no Starship has successfully reached orbit, that means these dummy payloads weren’t delivered to orbit.
It has been over two years of test flights, and Starship development has been agonisingly slow. It hasn’t even taken the first steps of being a usable launch vehicle. It has so far to go before it can even be considered for the veritable ultramarathon, which is the lunar lander project.
For one, Starship needs in-orbit refuelling from another Starship to get to the Moon, a challenge so eye-watering that NASA has deliberately avoided tackling it. Yet SpaceX hasn’t even started developing this technology, let alone demonstrating it. Furthermore, with Starship’s painfully low payload, refuelling will take over 30 refuelling missions. At their current launch rate, this would mean refuelling a Starship to reach the Moon would take over five years, so even if they started getting it ready today, Artemis III would be pushed back into the 2030s. This will also send costs spiralling to unfeasible levels. But, more critically, SpaceX has yet to prove the upper stage can actually land reliably and safely on the Moon, which, because of its enormous size and mass compared to “traditional” landers, is a serious challenge! It is also a pretty crucial thing to get right for a lunar lander…
Is it any wonder NASA is looking elsewhere? How can they trust the man who gave the world the Cybertruck, Robotaxis that drive illegally and an AI chatbot with a tendency to love Hitler to solve this long laundry list of insane engineering challenges on time?
Well, luckily for NASA, old Bezos was a little hurt that they gave SpaceX an exclusive contract for the HLS and sued. As a result, NASA also gave Bezos’s Blue Origin a $3.4 billion contract for a rival system. And it looks like it might be ready by 2027.
This is based on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. This is a smaller rocket than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, let alone Starship. Its payload to LEO is just 45 tonnes, or 20 tonnes less than Falcon Heavy’s and less than half of what Starship was promised to have. But, on its maiden test flight, New Glenn successfully delivered a 20-tonne dummy satellite to orbit. In other words, right off the bat, it has done something Starship has failed to achieve in 11 test flights! This also means that, unlike Starship, it is already a viable launch vehicle. Indeed, for its next flight, New Glenn is set to take a NASA mission to Mars! So New Glenn will likely beat Musk’s Starship to Mars, in addition to the Moon.
Blue Origin has also designed its own lunar lander called Blue Moon. While little is known of it, we know it is a more “traditional” lunar lander. At seven metres wide and just over 20 tonnes, it is a little bigger than the lander of the Apollo missions, but its similarities mean that the technology proven by Apollo can be applied here too. So, in theory, getting the Blue Moon lander working should be “easier” and quicker than modifying the giant, heavy, cumbersome and unproven upper stage of Starship into a lander.
Sadly, New Glenn only has a 10-tonne payload to Lunar orbit, so it can’t take it directly. But, unlike SpaceX, Blue Origin isn’t going down the wildly dangerous and unproven world of orbital refuelling. Instead, one New Glenn will launch Blue Moon into Earth orbit. Then, another New Glenn will launch with no payload, just extra fuel, rendezvous with the lander in orbit, and tow it to the Moon. This kind of docking and towing technology was used, proven and refined during the Space Shuttle days. So again, it should be “easy” for Blue Origin to develop this.
By using already proven technology and techniques, Blue Origin has significantly expedited its lunar development compared to SpaceX. In fact, Blue Origin is planning on demonstrating an uncrewed Blue Moon lunar landing mission early next year. So, within six months, this system could be proven viable and safe, which is well in time for Artemis III.
Starship doesn’t have a hope in hell of demonstrating mission-critical technology, like orbital refuelling, in time for Artemis III, let alone demonstrating an actual safe lunar landing.
And SpaceX can’t just modify a Falcon Heavy to do something similar to New Glenn. Its fairing size is only five metres, meaning it doesn’t have the cargo volume to carry a lander. What’s more, SpaceX hasn’t developed a standalone lander, which takes hundreds of millions of dollars and years of testing to develop. The company is also run incredibly lean, with the few engineers there all dedicated to Starship. Basically, SpaceX doesn’t have the time or resources to pivot to a more realistic offering for NASA.
This is what happens when you blindly try to reinvent the wheel, chasing hyper-growth unicorns. If you want genuine innovation, you need to be grounded in reality. You need to recognise history and why we did things a certain way in the past. You need to take the time to test and prove new technology and techniques before betting the farm on it. You need to take the time to assess how these systems will work in real life and mitigate risks, not just rely on blind optimism. Blue Origin kept and practised these fundamentals, and now they are set to leapfrog SpaceX. Under Musk, SpaceX has completely abandoned these fundamental principles, and now they have a giant, useless phallic rocket, which is a perfect metaphor for Musk himself and a perfect way to end this article.
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Sources: Space.com, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, NASA, Blue Origin, Next Space Flight, Blue Origin, SpaceX
I assume this is why Jared Isaacman’s nomination to head NASA is being resurrected by some, since Isaacman is Musk’s guy and Sean Duffy isn’t giving Musk what he wants.