The background
Since the Apollo program ended in 1972, humans have not traveled beyond Earth orbit. NASA has been trying to change that officially since 2004, when President George W. Bush announced what would become the agency’s back-to-the-moon constellation program.
In 2010, the Obama administration canceled Constellation, but two major parts of the program survived: the Orion crew capsule and a rocket that became what is now the Space Launch System, or SLS. Both vehicles are being developed using classic “cost-plus” contracts, with NASA paying full development costs, even if the costs are well above initial estimates.
NASA’s Artemis program will use the SLS to blow astronauts into orbit aboard Orion, where they will encounter a previously placed lunar lander to travel to the surface and back. Orion will also dock in the future with the Gateway, a small space station orbiting the moon. From there, astronauts can conduct science and transfer it to lunar lands.
Rather than building its own lunar lander like at SLS and Orion, NASA chose to pay space companies a fixed price to build their own lunar landers, which the companies will own. NASA, in turn, can purchase continuous landing services from these providers. The total costs for NASA are therefore fixed – any cost overruns are borne by the companies.
Conversely, if companies can supply their landers for less than the contract cost, the company keeps the difference as a profit. NASA has successfully deployed this model to transport crews and cargo to the ISS.
Encouraged by a business-friendly White House pushing for a 2024 moon landing, NASA expanded the use of public-private partnerships beyond low Earth orbit and created new programs for commercial lunar payloads of scientific instruments and technology demonstration missions. Last year, the agency funded SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics to develop human-ready lunar lander concepts for Artemis, and proposed spending nearly $ 21 billion over the next five years to support multiple human landing vehicles.
But despite strong White House support, Congress provided only $ 850 million for lunar landers last year – well below the $ 3.4 billion that NASA had requested. Faced with a funding gap, NASA delayed its decision to select which companies would receive funding to further develop their lunar landers.
That is, until last week when NASA announced they were going all-in on Starship.
NASA probably would have liked more than one provider for redundancy. But with little money to carry on and the prospect of seeing the moon landings drag on for many years to come, they chose the cheapest – and most likely of success – option: SpaceX.