Nasa quietly shelves boeing’s sls for lunar push, hands the keys to spacex
NASA has opened the escape hatch on its own $25-billion rocket. A draft revision of the Artemis flight plan swaps Boeing’s Space Launch System out of the trans-lunar injection burn, assigning that make-or-break maneuver to SpaceX’s still-experimental Starship once the vehicles meet in Earth orbit, agency officials confirmed Tuesday.
The shift, still unsigned but already circulating among contractors, would leave SLS with one last visible job: fling the Lockheed-built Orion capsule into low-Earth orbit. After that, the lunar gateway, the orbital choreography, even the final push to the Moon’s surface, would ride on Elon Musk’s next-generation stainless-steel booster.
Why the sudden rewrite
Two numbers explain the mutiny. Four billion: the estimated taxpayer price tag for every SLS/Orion duo, according to NASA’s inspector general. And 2028: the White House’s politically stamped deadline for boots on the lunar south pole. With SLS delivering its first uncrewed test in 2022 and the next flight not expected before late 2025, schedule arithmetic finally overruled legacy loyalties.
The proposed patch is elegant in its cruelty. Instead of blasting Orion directly toward the Moon, SLS would release the capsule at 28,000 km/h a few hundred miles above Earth. A waiting tanker Starship would then refill its own tanks in orbit, dock nose-to-nose with Orion, and light its Raptor engines for a four-day sprint to lunar orbit. Translation: Boeing’s marquee hardware becomes a $2-billion Uber to low-Earth orbit, nothing more.
Congressional knives are already out
Artemis rides on appropriations written by senators from Alabama and Utah, states that print money and jobs from SLS hardware. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman will brief those same lawmakers next week, armed with promises that Starship integration is “risk-retired” and that SLS production lines will stay open through Artemis V. Translation: the agency needs their votes, not their engineering advice.
Boeing shares slid 3.4 % within minutes of the leak, erasing $2.7 billion in market cap before a late-session rebound. SpaceX, still private, simply tweeted a Starship upper-stage photo captioned “Tanker 001.”
Can starship actually do this?
No crew has ever ridden a Super Heavy stack. Orbital refilling, the cornerstone of the new trajectory, has yet to leave PowerPoint. And NASA’s own auditors warned last month that Starship’s “schedule pressure exceeds demonstrated capability by a factor of two.” Yet the agency’s calculus is brutal: betting on a rocket that might fail beats bankrolling one that is guaranteed to bankrupt the calendar.
Lockheed, for its part, insists Orion’s heat shield and life-support systems remain “the only path home from the Moon,” a not-so-subtle reminder that Starship still lacks a proven return capsule. The company has three Orions in various stages of assembly; none are currently slated to fly on anything other than SLS.
Blue Origin, sidelined when SpaceX won the sole lunar-lander contract in 2021, now smells blood. Company lobbyists are shopping an alternate blueprint that would use its own New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander, coupled with a beefed-up Centaur upper stage, to shove Orion lunarward—no Starship required. NASA sources say that plan carries a sticker price $5 billion higher and a first-flight date no earlier than 2030, numbers that have so far kept it in the “entertaining but unlikely” folder.
Isaacman’s final slide deck, shown privately to White House space advisors last Friday, ends with a blunt forecast: keep SLS in the trans-lunar role and Artemis III slips to 2031; swap in Starship and the landing could still happen before the end of the decade, assuming at least four orbital refilling tests succeed by 2027. The room, according to two attendees, went quiet.
The betting window closes fast. A formal decision is expected before summer recess, after which metal gets cut and launch windows harden. Either NASA gambles on a rocket still climbing its test-stand scaffolding, or it doubles down on the costliest booster ever built and tells the next crew of astronauts to wait another three years for their ride. The Moon isn’t getting any closer, but the political clock keeps ticking louder.