NASA opens SpaceX's moon lander contract to rivals over Starship delays

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Reuters

October 20, 2025 6:58 PM EDT Updated 10 hours ago


WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - NASA said on Monday it was opening the marquee U.S. moon landing contract to other bidders because Elon Musk's SpaceX has experienced mounting delays with its Starship lunar lander. The move paves the way for rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to snatch a high-profile mission to land the first astronauts on the moon in half a century.

"I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," the U.S. space agency's acting chief Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.

Duffy's comments follow months of mounting pressure within NASA to speed up its Artemis lunar program and push SpaceX to make greater progress on its Starship lunar lander, while China progresses toward its own goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030.

It represents a major shift in NASA's lunar strategy, starting a new competitive juncture in the program for a crewed moon lander just two years before the scheduled landing date. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete for the mission, while Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) has indicated it would convene an industry team to heed NASA's call.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/science/us-seek-rival-bids-artemis-3-spacex-lags-nasa-chief-says-2025-10-20/

[Javaman]

1. just another chapter in the orange asshole vs empty husk grudge match. nt

[Eugene]

5. even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut

Lunar Starship is big in ambition and even bigger in Elon's overpromising.

Starship may be a long-term super-heavy lift solution for the 2030s and beyond, but it is unlikely to land astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade, never mind 2027. There are just too many moving parts.

There are more practical alternatives for a near-to-medium-term lander.

[Lonestarblue]

2. Imagine how much progress we could make on Earth by redirecting these billions here.

No one can live on Mars or the moon, but we have to live on a planet that is being destroyed by climate warming. We need to be spending money to fix our own planet before wasting billions for people like Musk and Bezos to play as rocket builders.

[The Grand Illuminist]

4. Unfortunately we have too many dreamers.

That would take refuge to those ideas than what's really going on in our world.

[LastDemocratInSC]

3. The SpaceX lunar plans are too complicated

and present many opportunities for failure. NASA considered similar plans in the 1960s but realized that a less complex "lunar orbit rendezvous" with a dedicated lander mitigated many of the risks of landing a big craft, full of fuel for the return trip to Earth, on the lunar surface.

John Houbolt saved the day.

https://share.google/inX7VqYW6mXXG7HOT

[hunter]

6. More than fifty years ago sending people to the moon was a grand adventure...

... that pushed the limits of our technology.

Now it's just a dangerous stunt.

My grandfather was an engineer for the Apollo Project. Various bits of the metal that took men to the moon and back were his. He was immensely proud of that work -- complex problems solved not with computers but with slide rules, chalk boards, and sketches on paper; drawings made on drafting tables, respecting and working shoulder-to-shoulder with the talented machinist and technicians who fabricated the metal, and an unwavering commitment to quality.

We now know much more about the moon than we did then. Our robots can accomplish more science in space than any human burdened by complex and expensive life support systems can.

What's the point of sending humans too the moon?

I doubt natural born humans will ever have a significant presence in space beyond low earth orbit. We're just too damned fragile and space is too damned dangerous.

Of course people still climb Mount Everest too and many die doing it. I just don't want to encourage them, and I certainly don't want to subsidize them.

No good will come of this.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. I think it is supposed to be a reintroduction to off-world exploration

and potentially a future "jumping off point" for humans eventually heading to Mars.

[hunter]

8. Why would any rational human want to go to Mars?

And why would I want to pay for that?



Scientific exploration I understand.

Sending humans to the moon or mars is just an incredibly expensive and gruesome accident waiting to happen, for little or no gain.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. You must not be a Trekkie like me!

(ETA - there is often a "commercial" incentive, i.e., future "mining" of some mineral or substance not available or readily available, that might be useful on Earth)

[hunter]

12. I've been a Star Trek fan since the first episode aired and a Science Fiction fan longer than that.

I've still got some of the Tom Swift books I read as a kid, including Tom Swift and His Flying Lab (1954)

I really wanted a flying lab. And a girlfriend.

Lt. Uhura was my first TV crush.

I just don't think we humans are going to achieve any significant in-person exploration of the solar system by a rehash of the Apollo Program.

Disney's 1964 Mary Poppins movie was pretty good.

The 2018 version was disappointing.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. Well then you would know the "reason"

Baby steps.

As I understand, there was a consideration to actually construct some base on the moon for an extended stay. This is why they have been running those long term "isolation" habitat tests, with one eyeing a Mars simulation that just got started at the beginning of this month (and they were to enter the habitat 2 days ago) - NASA Announces CHAPEA Crew for Year-Long Mars Mission Simulation

In the case of the above Mars one, they are factoring in the comm delay between Earth and Mars for any relays of instructions, etc. to get a good sim of potential issues of dealing with that.

[hunter]

16. Baby smiles.

Or it could be gas.

If advanced civilizations are watching us maybe they are waiting for a warp signature or something similarly advanced before they make first contact, like the Star Trek Vulcans and later Federation.

Or maybe it's something even more sophisticated than that, like a demonstrated ability to live in harmony with our natural environment and at peace with ourselves.

What if the Neanderthals are gone because they walked away with the Star People to become a respected community within the galactic federation? Maybe other earth species unrelated to humans have walked that path too -- Cetacean, squid, dinosaur, bird, insects, fungi, plants, heck even rocks.

Meanwhile, here we are, modern twenty-first century humans jerking ourselves off into orbit riding giant pollution spewing metal dildos.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. That was the ongoing debate within Trek

You had some societies like the Vulcans, a warrior group with a pronounced violent streak and they "tamed" that via a societal force-feeding of "logic".

Humans don't have a natural predator other than themselves so you are seeing the "self-thinning" of our herd!

[RoseTrellis]

13. Species survival

Assuming we humans don’t kill off our species by war or man made famine, the earth will eventually be destroyed when the sun collapses. Another possibility for destruction would be another major asteroid impact that plunges the earth in a centuries long ice age.
The only way to survive as a species is to get off Earth and find another planet to inhabit.
I’m hoping we learned our lesson with what not to do, and we can peacefully coexist with whatever native flora and fauna is already there!

[hunter]

17. If we survive for any great time as a species (most species don't) it won't be because we built rockets.

The only exception I can think of, an unlikely one, is that we manage to deflect some huge rock headed our way.

That didn't happen in the movie.

[angrychair]

10. Here is a novel idea

How about having NASA do it? I mean they did design and launch the only ships to land humans on the moon.
Just thinking out loud here. I realize it's a radical idea, having the National Aeronautics and Space Administration design and build space craft but it could work.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. NASA still contracted that out

E.g., Grumman, etc. and they didn't "build it", the contractors did but they (like they do today) obviously worked closely with their engineers and provided oversight.

[angrychair]

19. Not like it used to be

It doesn't work the same way as it did in the past. We are currently just shoveling money into the bottomless pit that is SpaceX. I'm tired of giving our tax dollars to prop up petty, cruel billionaires that are, objectively, trying to destroy the country.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. What's different

is that for some things, we contract out but NASA will "retain ownership" of the vehicles and/or software codes whereas in other cases, we will give "private" entities "grants" for producing the tech and in some cases, will "take ownership" (under NASA/the government) and in other cases, will just provide oversight, and the effort belongs to the private entity.

There had been an unfortunate trend in the modern U.S. where people were (righteously) complaining about "funding theoreticals, hypotheticals, and dreams" when you have large swaths of the population with no roof over their head or food to eat due to corporate malfeasance, and not correspondingly funding things to alleviate that. Thus the gradual "privatization" of space efforts.

[angrychair]

21. I get that

"funding theoreticals, hypotheticals, and dreams"

That is literally the job of our government. I actually expect them to do that. Obviously that doesn't mean we found every half baked idea but some of them, yes. Others need at least to prove a viable concept.
To be clear, we pump billions of dollars into research every year and every year it becomes less and less but corporations keep getting more and more.
If someone is complaining about billion dollars in research money but not about 100 billion in corporate grift from the government, then we, as a society, are sending the wrong message.

[BumRushDaShow]

22. We have a lack of effective oversight

thanks to the billions pumped into our elected officials for lobbying and at election time.

Citizen's United was the catalyst that lead to this destruction.

[angrychair]

23. Absolutely agree

Citizens United has absolutely ruined politics

[LudwigPastorius]

14. Musk's Starship Lander has never looked like a good idea.

[angrychair]

24. Nothing that asshole does

Is ever a good idea.