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Falcon Heavy is quite a capable rocket, with about 60% of the SLS's payload capacity to LEO when the side boosters are reused (although it's almost never used for LEO, since no one actually needs that large of a payload there...).

New Glenn can reuse it's whole first stage, but currently has only 47% of the SLS's payload capacity to LEO. (with plans for a larger variant)

Starship... has been kind of a mess. At least with how their timeline has compared to their goals. They have demonstrated several successful launches, but with the reliability of their past few, I doubt anyone will trust them anytime soon.

China seems extremely close to having a partially reusable heavy lift rocket, they have said that they'll test it in the first half of this year (LEO payload a little bit higher than Falcon Heavy, but they plan to go to the moon with something very similar). India has some looser long-term plans.

As a spaceflight nerd, I was thinking today about why I (and everyone else) don't care that much about the Artemis launch. I think it's largely because it's not demonstrating anything new; they already did basically the same mission but without the people in it, and even more advanced missions with people in them were done in the 1960s. The rocket itself though isn't helping, the only things it has going for it compared to other modern rockets are that it's large and probably reliable. The technology is basically just re-used space shuttle parts, there's nothing that seems particularly innovative, and reusing old technology hasn't prevented it from being extremely expensive compared to basically everything else (~20x the cost of New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, or Starship per launch...). It's also worse for the environment in basically every way (expendable, and has solid fuel boosters).

I kind of agree with what some other people have been saying about NASA for a while now. They should probably just stick to the satellites, rovers, and technology tests, making their own launch vehicle is not really helping anyone. The usefulness of being a government funded thing is that they can do the type of science to help humanity that doesn't turn a profit. They don't really need their own launch vehicle to do their science, and the vehicle itself is so conservative that I'm sure they aren't really learning anything from it. If they were actually capable of producing something economical and better than the corporations then it wouldn't be a problem, but that will never happen with Congress pushing rocket designs that "seem like they would be cheaper" and forcing NASA to route all work through insanely inefficient military contractors.

If SpaceX realllllllly wanted to, Falcon Heavy could likely pull off a lunar return trip like this (edit: with modifications), but ya, SpaceX designed their existing rockets around reusability in LEO.

When you don't have to think about reusability, it's a lot easier to do things, as so many problems become a lot simpler and weight savings are substantial.

Everything you say is correct, and it’s great that the mission is actually in progress.

But that is neither here nor there with the point I was making.

I’m just glad that things have the potential to turn around at NASA now. I’d love to see them back at the forefront of space exploration and technology.

Indeed… the program is sustainable at the expense of the environment.

But it’s a step up from not sustainable at all.

I really really hope the moon program gets beyond both those issues (figuratively and literally).