Amid concerns over China’s space-related progress, NASA is reviewing new lunar lander proposals from SpaceX and Blue Origin. The move initially prompted a flurry of insults from Musk on X.
SpaceX has come up with a more constructive response to NASA concerns about its Human Landing System (HLS) project than rage-posts by Elon Musk insulting NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy as “Sean Dummy.”
Instead of insisting that everything is well with HLS, which is based on the upper stage of SpaceX’s giant, still-under-development Starship rocket, SpaceX says it is now working on a “simplified” version of that lander.
The news came in an unusually detailed update from SpaceX. Part of its almost 2,000-word post recaps progress on Starship, which completed its 11th test flight in October, and on such HLS components as its life-support system, airlock, communications gear, and the elevator that will take astronauts and gear from the top of the tall HLS vehicle down to the lunar surface.
This post reports a sometime-in-2026 test of the orbital refueling necessary for the HLS concept to work. Starship’s upper stage reaches orbit with its tanks mostly empty, requiring multiple refills from other Starships.
NASA knew of this complexity when it awarded SpaceX a $2.89 billion contract in 2021 (since revised to $4 billion, with $2.7 billion paid so far) to develop HLS to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and then back.
