NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

There is just so much wrong with this from start to finish. Here are a few things, by no means inclusive:

1. We’ve already beaten China to the moon by 56 years, 3 months, and some change. And counting.

2. Nothing based around SLS is remotely serious. The cost and timeline of doing anything with it are unreasonable. It is an absolute dead-end. The SpaceX Super Heavy has been more capable arguably as early as the second flight test and certainly now. They could have built a “dumb” second stage at any time, but aren’t that short-sighted.

3. Blue Origin? I’ve had high hopes for the guys for two decades now. Don’t hold your breath.

4. Anyone else? Really, really don’t hold your breath.

This whole “race to the moon, part II” is almost criminally stupid. Land on the moon when we can accomplish something there, not just to prove we haven’t lost our mojo since Apollo.

If Luna is a textbook then we’ve read the section headings for chapter 15 of 43 and stolen half a page by ripping it out and taking it home. Oh and that’s just Volume I. There’s a whole Volume II (The Far Side) for which we’ve barely even read the sleeve notes.

In terms of field geology alone, we deserve permanent human presence on The Moon. Apollo was an impressive first shot but it is completely unrealistic to act like we know anything more than one percent of one percent about Moon’s geology. They nailed the flat bits on the marine side, but you’d laugh at someone who claimed they knew Earth’s geology after a few weeks in Buenos Aires, Houston, and Miami:

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/see-apollo-...

Who will be woken up by the first moonquake? Who will visit the first mooncaves? Who will find the first water-based anomaly — some kind of periodic waterfall maybe, in a heat trap that warms up one day a year? Who will see the first solar eclipse?