Space Case

The case for cheaper space:

SLS isn't just a boring and stupid name for an impressively sized rocket; it's underpowered and too expensive for its intended mission. SLS can't put enough mass into lunar orbit to account for the Orion space capsule it carries and its four-person crew and their supplies. It doesn't even carry the landing vehicle. To make up for SLS's shortcomings, we're going to build Lunar Gateway — an international space station in orbit around the moon. The plan is that Orion and its crew will dock at the Gateway and transfer to a SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS, and another boring name) for transit to the lunar surface, where they'll conduct their mission, and then back to the Gateway for transfer back to Orion for the voyage back to Earth. HLS gets to Lunar Gateway courtesy of a SpaceX Starship. Did you get all that? There will be a quiz later. The complexity is only necessary because SLS can't produce enough lift. Starship, once completed, can produce enough lift, making the Lunar Gateway and all that going back and forth unnecessary. The Lunar Gateway is expected to cost $5.3 billion just for initial construction (and we both know what happens to those initial estimates; they go nowhere but up) and another billion dollars each year to operate and maintain. Maybe there's a case to be made for Artemis to include an orbital substation, but it isn't Lunar Gateway. A modified Starship could — not just in theory — do the same job the Lunar Gateway is supposed to do. Starship Gateway, or whatever you want to call it, could reach lunar orbit with a single launch and go to work immediately, no painstaking and dangerous orbital assembly required. Starship Gateway would have up to ten times (!!!) more habitable space than Lunar Gateway, and at a price measured in tens of millions instead of billions.

Bigger isn't always better...