This is really huge news. Starship has in about 18 months gone from a Elon standing next to a steel grain silo duct-taped into the shape of a rocket, to all the eggs in NASA's moon basket. The thing I kept thinking - and I have to believe was considered within NASA - is given the rapid progress SpaceX has been making along with the delays in Congressional funding, SLS, BlueOrigin's other projects etc ... if NASA
hadn't selected SpaceX there was at least some chance they'd go ahead and do their own private Moon landing mission before NASA's, a massive egg-on-face moment.
There are still major risks with the Starship program so I don't think anyone should be 100% confident they can pull this off, but the massive side benefit is if they do NASA will have proven out a generic system, fully reusable and with orbital refueling, that can with minimal modification cost-effectively send humans to Mars and much of the rest of the solar system as well. A Model T or 737 in space. The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now.
If at some point say 2025, NASA says to the President "we can get the first human on Mars in 4 years for $15 billion" I have to imagine any American president being eager to sign their name on that accomplishment and give the JFK speech, "We choose to go to Mars in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win"
To me that's the real takeaway here: this is implicitly a huge NASA bet not just on the Moon, but Mars and the rest of the solar system. Finally.
There are still major risks with the Starship program so I don't think anyone should be 100% confident they can pull this off, but the massive side benefit is if they do NASA will have proven out a generic system, fully reusable and with orbital refueling, that can with minimal modification cost-effectively send humans to Mars and much of the rest of the solar system as well. A Model T or 737 in space. The original Artemis plan never made much sense as a Mars "proof-of-concept", but it actually does now.
If at some point say 2025, NASA says to the President "we can get the first human on Mars in 4 years for $15 billion" I have to imagine any American president being eager to sign their name on that accomplishment and give the JFK speech, "We choose to go to Mars in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win"
To me that's the real takeaway here: this is implicitly a huge NASA bet not just on the Moon, but Mars and the rest of the solar system. Finally.