NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

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.

Today’s America scores zero points for its accomplishments of the past. But I think one way it can be a good thing is the, “we’ve done it before, we can do it again” attitude. Which is somewhat opposite to “we already won!”

The idea that we need to land on the moon once a generation just to say that we are as good at landing on the moon as our parents is absurd.

This is sort of like saying Leif Erikson and the Icelandic Commonwealth won the "the new world race" in 1000AD. Whatever Columbus et al were up to would surely be of trifling concern to future generations.

(Although I think the moon landing is ridiculous there is no scientific reason for it).

JWST is actually a good example. The (slow) unfolding of the telescope was a long-term nail-biting experience, because even very trivial problems that could have been easily fixed with a screwdriver or a finger poke on Earth could doom one of the most sophisticated pieces of scientific equipment ever produced.

We were lucky in the end, but if anything went wrong, the result would be immense frustration and the most expensive piece of space junk per unit of weight.

But in general, you probably don't need human bodies for such maintenance on the Moon, "just" very sophisticated and versatile robot mechanics. IDK what is easier.