Duffy wants to recompete HLS.
[Wednesday-morning update]
One of the reasons that we have made so little progress in space for the past half century is that Congress decided that NASA had to have its own space transportation, regardless of how terrible it is at it.
— Rand Simberg (@Simberg_Space) October 21, 2025
Delete unnecessary parts and processes ==> If Starship can land 100 T of stuff on the Moon, or fly >10 T to and from the Moon from LEO without refueling, all other parts of the NASA so-called "architecture" are unnecessary, regardless of how many tens of billions of dollars have… https://t.co/Gna5xuX9GO
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) October 21, 2025
There have been many dud NASA administrators, some of which looked good on paper (e.g., Dick Truly). Webb was a lawyer, but even he had experience in the aviation industry. What are Duffy's qualifications? You need to at least know which end the fire comes out of.
— Rand Simberg (@Simberg_Space) October 22, 2025
[Early-afternoon update]
Bob Zimmerman is not impressed.
OK.
Competition is good. Especially for SpaceX.
The others are so far behind it isn’t funny. This guy thinks Blue can build a lander quicker than SpaceX? Lunacy.
They can’t but have to go through the motions.
Surely lunacy has its place for a *lunar* contract? 🙂
I put the whole emphasis on beating China thing as a one and done… Blowing billions in the process…
I’ve often wondered if SpaceX committing to HLS was/is a mistake…
That said, I love this quote:
“Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words,” he [Musk] added.
That prophesy could be true with or without a commitment to NASA’s HLS…
That’s what I think will happen. Nothing stopping SpaceX from designing and building their own mission their own way – cutting NASA and the ridiculous Artemis – and getting to the moon.
And like Mike B says above – SpaceX is so far ahead of everyone else that thinking someone else will go faster is rather amusing. Especially All Talk No Action Blue Origin.
Rumor has it Duffy would prefer to be NASA Administrator rather than SOT. So stir the pot? Bias for action?
I look upon this as Christmas preceding Halloween in 2025. The NASA Lifer Mafia, OldSpace and an over-credulous “Temporary” NASA Admin have combined to make the same mistake the Japanese made at Pearl Harbor and Putin made invading Ukraine – they think they can go after SpaceX while risking nothing they already hold. Prepare for a coming master class in the smashing of unwarranted assumptions.
The best part of all of this is that we now have Elon on public record declaring he will build an SLS-Orion killer. This was inevitably in the cards, but it’s clarifying to have it out in plain sight now. The next couple of years are going to be spicy.
Control F “Boeing” yields no hits
Duffy wants to be President, and the NASA Deep State is using that to manipulate him. Or so they say.
Lots of people want to be President – the majority of whom are dumb as fenceposts. Duffy might be one of them – if he is actually the credulous gull the collective Old Guard seem now to believe him to be. But he might also be playing some seriously wicked 4-D chess here. At this point, he’s a Schrodinger Man – perhaps a fool and perhaps a genius. We must await the opening of the box.
Anent Presidential ambitions, the admittedly spotty “tradition” of the Veep being the Administration’s space guy – which started with LBJ – has been looking a bit the worse for wear lately. Still, Vance seemed uninterested and has left the door open for someone else to grab off this portfolio, for whatever personal good it may do him. Duffy has at least stepped up. The coming few years bid fair to be quite interesting.
Little Marco.
Sure, that’s the problem with Artemis. Way to put your finger on it, Duffy. Godspeed.
The most salient critique of my posts here is their lack of both aeronautical engineering and theory (not my field), orbital mechanics and mathematical rigor. So to make amends and with the help of Grok, I’ve put together a comprehensive matrix of all NASA Artemis Program options NOT using SpaceX.
Turns out the total matrix row size can be represented by the simple formula n=3!-1. With column size fixed at 3. Double checked by Grok. They are (in no particular order):
– ready, fire, aim
– fire, ready, aim
– fire, aim, ready
– aim, ready, fire
– aim, fire, ready
A student on the Engineering campus was wearing a T-shirt depicting the Apollo “mission architecture.” I walked up to him, told him I admired his shirt, “but now do Gateway.”
He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Is Gateway the name of the Moon orbiting space station for staging lunar landings, or is it also the name for the Rube Goldberg mission architecture of near-rectilinear halo orbits, cryogenic landers and 15 launches of a Starship-class heavy booster to reproduce what Apollo did with one Saturn V?
In fairness, Artemis, even in its current SLS-Orion-centric minginess, is intended to do rather more than Apollo ever did with a single Saturn V. An all-SpaceX lunar architecture that deletes SLS, Orion, NRHO and Gateway could do vastly more and be completely reusable in the bargain.
He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Is Gateway the name of the Moon orbiting space station for staging lunar landings, or is it also the name for the Rube Goldberg mission architecture of near-rectilinear halo orbits, cryogenic landers and 15 launches of a Starship-class heavy booster to reproduce what Apollo did with one Saturn V?
Only if that Apollo mission is returning something like 100 tons from the Moon’s surface. Even with the Rube Goldberg stuff, one doesn’t need that much propellant mass to do an Apollo mission.
Between Musk’s tweet and the recent SpaceX announcement of commercial interplanetary trucking services beginning 2028 (apply your personal Musk time factor here) I’m feeling more hopeful about lunar development, whether NASA is involved or not.
You should be. At a minimum, Duffy has now “incentivized” Elon to put getting to the Moon on par with getting to Mars. If there are ways to do that even faster than SpaceX was already going, Elon will find them. And we’ll be getting an SLS-Orion replacement gratis. Pique can be a powerful motivator. What’s not to love about all of that?
In addition, Ye Olde Guarde will get opportunities to try stepping up to SpaceX’s level on SpaceX timelines. At a minimum, that will prove amusing and perhaps one of the horses will even learn to sing.
And we don’t even know yet if all of this will transpire because Duffy is a genius-level “coach” or whether he’s just a credulous noob who has fallen in with bad companions. Admittedly, wanting to pull NASA into the DOT strongly argues in favor of the latter thesis, but let us see how things play out. As Elon likes to say, excitement guaranteed.
Ha! Yes. Don’t swing your big sword at the guy with the .45.
.455 – Webley top break
I suspect there are two reasons for the announcement:
– pressure from competitors, who don’t like SpaceX and their relative positions.
– an urge to increase his empire.
As far as I know, no other American company is working on re-use, which means they’re not serious about space. Re-use has changed things. The other option to vastly increase the tempo would be somehow making rockets really cheap, so you can actually throw them away. I doubt physics will allow this.
“Opening up the contract” just means the competitors can siphon off money, while doing the same thing they’ve always done.
As for Duffy’s proposal to move NASA into Transportation, this shows his real motive. He wants more people under him. This proposal should be treated with the same disdain you would use for someone who proposed that the Navy should be under Transportation because they move people around too.
On the other hand, putting NASA under the SOT might make them realize they haven’t accomplished that much since Nixon was president.
Related to Casey Handmer’s post:
Falcon Heavy can put approximately 33,000lbs to trans-lunar injection orbit.
Orion Capsule with SM is about 34,000lbs. Knock some weight off it and they could orbit the moon whenever they want.
Dynetics HLS was estimated to weigh about 27,000lbs.
Starship Block 3 is estimating to have TLI capacity of 59,500lbs.
If SpaceX competitors can drop 1,500lbs, they might be able to get to the moon next year… on Starship Block 3.
Of course, that assumes a safe and viable Orion Capsule for return from lunar orbit (it doesn’t exist just yet) and another HLS system that nobody is currently designing, much less building.
I’m fine with the competition argument, but the rest of the argument by Duffy is just silly nonsense that makes him seem like an idiot.
Leland writes:
…Of course, that assumes a safe and viable Orion Capsule for return from lunar orbit (it doesn’t exist just yet)…
My two cents:
Doesn’t appear to be an impediment to launching a crewed Artemis II mission…
If SLS/Orion (plus as yet undeveloped HLS and lunar space suits) was dubbed Apollo 2.0. What is Artemis II but Apollo 8.2? Would one say this is at the same level of risk as Apollo 8? Greater? Less Than?
How much could a fully expendable/stripped down SuperHeavy/Starship loft?
It’s a good question, with many numbers. Maybe as high as 800,000 pounds. What a lunar starship really needs is a third stage.
That’s probably an exaggeration. 300 metric tons is only 660.,000 pounds. Hardly worth the effort!
There’s no need for Orion, Dragon’s ablative heat shield has ample margin for a lunar return. Dragon with a superdraco-powered ascent stage could do a direct return from the surface of the moon, leaving the HLS as a huge lunar base.
HLS has no Earth entry capability, so how would it be re-used? Fly it back up to lunar orbit and refuel it there from a tanker that was refueled in LEO?
Bottom line, doing fully-reuseable manned missions is tough.
“Fly it back up to lunar orbit and refuel it there from a tanker that was refueled in LEO?”
Bingo, pretty much. Refuel from a depot ship that was, itself, filled up in LEO then transited to lunar orbit. Depot ships intended for service in lunar orbit would likely have both TPS tiling and small flaps to allow controlled aerobraking when returning empty from lunar orbit to LEO, though if one allowed for a more leisurely, multi-pass scrub-off of return velocity, perhaps the bare stainless structure would be enough. HLSes and cargo-only equivalents, once in the lunar vicinity, would stay there and just go from lunar orbit to lunar surface and back up again repeatedly.
Government budgeting is an ideological exercise, so if beating China back to the Moon is the objective, then maybe instead of limiting the award to one company, government should fund several companies. Then drop a fat bonus on whoever gets there first.
I think you could get zero competitors, as what those companies really want is cost-plus, which = fat bonus. Goves them a fat boner whenever they think about it.
My real question is, how do these upper-level bureaucrats enter government service? How did Amit Kshatriya get where his is now.? All I know about him is, he’s from Minnesota.
I read Zimmerman’s assessment. His closing reminded me of the silly schedules NASA would post about the ISS launch dates in the late 90’s. Everyone working the program new when the schedules were released that the dates on them would never be met. The hardware wasn’t even meeting the delivery dates related to those launch schedules, and then NASA would spend months testing the hardware after delivery, and then you needed an available Shuttle and ISS wasn’t the only priority.
The difference now is NASA’s Manned Space Flight program doesn’t really have any other priorities than Artemis and it still can’t make schedule. They can’t even be sure they can get two flights in within 1/3rd of a decade.
Give Elon the chance to ask for more money. Seriously, Starship will be ready to go repeatedly to the moon by itself long before SLS/ Orion is ready to go once. Maybe SpaceX should sell tickets to NASA astronauts, they can ride with the other private passengers.
I don’t think Elon wants more money. It isn’t necessary and trying to get it would simply be a distraction. Let the other “competitors” – if any – dice for problematical NASA largesse. Starlink is already throwing off more cash than needed to keep the whole Starship project, in all of its multifarious aspects, going.
What you describe here was always going to happen. Now, it’s just going to happen maybe modestly sooner.