Starship is the lander for Artemis. Something doesn't add up.

[ColinRyan]

I've been following the various manned space programs worldwide for decades, and there is something so glaringly obvious that I simply do not understand it.

Starship is the chosen lander for the Artemis program. But Starship is designed to reach the Moon and Mars from LEO. So why is NASA even bothering with Orion, Capstone and Gateway? SpaceX is even planning to send a Starship on a tourist jaunt around the Moon. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the whole thing could be done with Starships, and probably much cheaper.

If there are any articles about this, I'd appreciate someone pointing them out to me.

 

[LKK]

If starship is as advertised your arguements are good ones, and have been made often. Of course starship is as of now unproven. That Musk is huge on big promises is obvious,things are confused because He does bring some of it to life, It will be very exciting if Starship lives up to the hype.

 

[ColinRyan]

Of course starship is as of now unproven. ... It will be very exciting if Starship lives up to the hype.

Yeah, good point, but NASA seems convinced, and it's pretty hard to convince NASA, or any space agency for that matter.

 

[Cisventure Astronot]

I don't think Gateway is made obsolete by Starship, although it should be redesigned from the ground up to use Starships capacity, and Orion is important because Starship likely isn't going to get human-rated any time soon.

But you're right. It's weird that NASA requires Starship for Artemis, yet doesn't take full advantage of it.

 

[Hardcrunchyscience]

I've been following the various manned space programs worldwide for decades, and there is something so glaringly obvious that I simply do not understand it.

Starship is the chosen lander for the Artemis program. But Starship is designed to reach the Moon and Mars from LEO. So why is NASA even bothering with Orion, Capstone and Gateway? SpaceX is even planning to send a Starship on a tourist jaunt around the Moon. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the whole thing could be done with Starships, and probably much cheaper.

If there are any articles about this, I'd appreciate someone pointing them out to me.

If you are looking for logical thinking, planning and operations, manned spaceflight of modern day nasa is NOT the place to look. Don't look under that rock!!

 

[Atlan0001]

I've been following the various manned space programs worldwide for decades, and there is something so glaringly obvious that I simply do not understand it.

Starship is the chosen lander for the Artemis program. But Starship is designed to reach the Moon and Mars from LEO. So why is NASA even bothering with Orion, Capstone and Gateway? SpaceX is even planning to send a Starship on a tourist jaunt around the Moon. It doesn't take a genius to work out that the whole thing could be done with Starships, and probably much cheaper.

If there are any articles about this, I'd appreciate someone pointing them out to me.

You want to produce a dead end cul-de-sac? Try any vehicle or company or state without widening, deepening, competition. Thus in fact, revolutionary and evolutionary variation potential.