Not gonna matter if they don’t pull the plug on starship being the lunar lander.
They were supposed to do an unmanned lunar landing with the thing earlier this year. Currently it has failed to deliver itself to any orbit, let alone demonstrate the ability to refuel in orbit and reach the moon.
And that’s with empty test articles, no life support equipment, food, water, or anything else the crew is going to need.
Starship is at best, years behind schedule, and at worst, an outright snake oil scheme designed to defraud American Taxpayers.
Same for SLS, except way more expensive and way more far behind schedule.
Did some googling (go verify these numbers yourself if you want to):
- SLS Dev.Costs so far: around $11.8 Billion (numbers from 2023 report), development started in 2011, reuses actual space shuttle parts instead of developing something on their own. Costs per launch estimate: $4.1 Billion
- Starship Dev.Costs so far: $5 Billion, started somewhere in 2019, based on Falcon technology, which started in 2002. Cost per launch estimate: realistically somewhere around $100 Million (Falcon 9 costs ~$62Million per launch including profit). I’ll ignore SpaceXs delirious goal of $2-$3 Million per launch for now.
Both companies are far behind schedule and budget. I think SLS will put a lander on the moon first and SLS will land the bulk of the whole program on the moon afterwards. Sort of like comparing an F1 car with a Full-sized Truck. After that Starship 3 launch, which was mostly successful, I am quite sure they’ll make it work at some point in the future.
