SpaceX and its ambitious Starship lander are taking most of the heat right now for delays to NASA’s Artemis program.
Don’t get this wrong - SpaceX is making incredible progress on an insanely difficult project, and they already seem to be going full throttle.
It’s not like everything else in the Artemis program is running perfectly while SpaceX is the only one holding things up.
Still, it makes you wonder - what more could SpaceX realistically do to speed up Starship’s development?
And if that’s not possible, are there any alternative paths that could help them deliver on time for such a demanding mission?
If you haven’t been keeping up lately, NASA is looking for new ideas for lunar landers to help astronauts return to the Moon. Progress on SpaceX’s Starship megarocket - originally chosen for the job - has been slower than expected.
During an interview on Monday morning, U.S. Transportation Secretary and interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy announced that NASA will reopen the contract to build the Human Landing System (HLS) for the Artemis III mission, which aims to put American astronauts back on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era.
The contract was initially awarded to SpaceX, which Duffy praised as an “amazing company.”
However, he voiced concern that the Starship HLS may not be ready in time, suggesting that Blue Origin or another competitor could take over.
“The problem is, they’re behind,” Duffy said. “They’ve pushed their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the Moon within this presidential term.”
Not surprisingly, Elon Musk didn’t take the comments well, firing back on X by calling the interim NASA administrator “Sean ‘Dangerously Stupid’ Dummy.”
Politics aside, if you look at where the Starship program stands today, it’s not hard to see why Duffy might have his doubts.
Since its debut in 2023, SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket has flown eleven times with mixed results.
Some flights ended in “rapid unscheduled disassemblies” (SpaceX’s trademark term for explosions), but there have also been big wins - like the first successful landing of the Super Heavy booster back at Starbase, a key step toward full reusability.
While SpaceX has landed Starship prototypes before, it hasn’t yet landed a full two-stage system.
That’s the next major goal, proving both stages can be quickly reused - central to SpaceX’s plan for high-frequency, low-cost missions.
