NASA chose SpaceX to bring Americans back to the moon, perhaps as early as 2024, preferring Elon Musk’s company to Blue Origin, the competing space group created by Jeff Bezos. And at least one of the astronauts, who will return to walk on the lunar surface after half a century, will be a woman, the first in history. Another goal of the US space agency is to bring the first black man to the moon.
The order, announced on Friday, is worth $ 2.9 billion and marks a break with the past, given that a single company (SpaceX) was chosen instead of a consortium – a protection in the event of the failure of one of the companies – to build the new spaceship for the moon landing. It seems due to budgetary constraints, which have already forced NASA to rely on private individuals to cut the costs of space missions. Last year, SpaceX thus became the first private company to successfully send a crew to the International Space Station, allowing America to accomplish the feat for the first time since the end of the Shuttle program.
Next to Musk, with SpaceX, valued nearly 100 billion dollars in the latest round of fundraising, and Bezos with his Blue Origin, the third company in the race was Dynetics, a defense company of the Leidos Holdings group.
SpaceX has already unveiled its Starship reusable spacecraft, designed to carry crews and cargoes for long journeys in space and which can land in an upright position. Prototypes of the rocket are currently being tested in Texas, but all four flights attempted so far have ended badly with explosions.
The commercial moon landing lander is part of the Artemis program. The project predicts that astronauts will fly to the moon on the Orion capsule, launched by NASA with a rocket of its own, produced by Boeing. Only then will they transfer to Musk’s Starship, in lunar orbit, for the journey to the surface of the moon and back. In short, Musk will have to build the taxi from Orion to the moon and back.
Unlike the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 – on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Captain of Apollo 11, became the first human to walk on the moon, Eugene Cernan during the Apollo 17 mission was the last on December 14, 1972 – NASA is preparing for a long-term presence on the moon, which it envisions as a first step towards an even more ambitious plan targeting Mars.
We should make the next landing as soon as possible, Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s interim administrator, said in a streaming press conference from Cape Canaveral. This is an incredible time to be involved in human exploration, for all of humanity.
Last December, NASA designated 18 astronauts for possible participation in the agency’s planned missions to return to the lunar surface, with a target date in 2024. The final timetable for the Artemis program depends on contractors developing and testing the equipment and securing program funding. If they hit the expected goals, we may have a chance for 2024, Jurczyk added.
Seen from another perspective, the lunar challenge was a competition between billionaire entrepreneurs: the third richest man in the world (with a fortune valued by Forbes in 179.7 billion dollars, thanks to his 22% stake in the electric car manufacturer Tesla) he defeated the richest man on the planet (with a fortune of 197.8 billion, amassed with Amazon).
For Musk another intermediate dream that is about to come true. If Tesla became the most valuable car manufacturer in the world, with a market capitalization of 702 billion dollars, far surpassing the giants of the auto industry, achieving Mars is the ultimate goal of this visionary and eccentric entrepreneur, who alongside electric cars and space rockets, he is also dedicated to designing neuronal implants to enhance the capabilities of the human mind or to tunneling to revolutionize transport. Musk imagines the conquest of Mars since he was a child in South Africa.
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