If you had a 100 tons of free luggage, what would you take to the Moon?
I have to confess that as somebody who studies disruptive innovation, my interested was piqued when SpaceX engineer, Aarti Matthews, accused NASA of overlooking the contribution the load-carrying potential of the Starship rocket could make to the Artemis Program.
What’s Matthews’ problem? For decades, weight has been the key factor in all space missions. The purpose of the Artemis Program is to re-explore the Moon, to take a man and a woman to the lunar south pole in 2024, with the long-term goal of establishing a sustainable human presence there, and to do so, it needs to be able to carry 865 kilograms, including the two crew members and the equipment necessary for a short stay there.
What happened when NASA decided to award the contract to SpaceX? The company’s Starship is capable of carrying 100 metric tons to the Moon, more than a hundred times the mission specifications, at a cost, moreover, significantly lower than any previous mission. To put things in perspective, Aarti says the Starship could haul four fire trucks, more than eleven elephants or a hundred lunar exploration rovers into space, exceeding the initial mission specifications such that NASA seemingly doesn’t know what to do with all that surplus capacity.
