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HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Two former NASA administrators criticized the agency’s current approach to using SpaceX’s Starship for the Artemis 3 crewed lunar landing, calling for an urgent redirection to reach the moon before China.
In a fireside chat at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium on Oct. 29, former administrators Charlie Bolden and Jim Bridenstine expressed skepticism that NASA’s current Artemis architecture, using Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface, can succeed before the first projected Chinese crewed landing later this decade.
With the current approach, Bridenstine said, “the probability of beating China approaches zero, rapidly. We have to do something different.”
Bridenstine, who led NASA during the first Trump administration, previously criticized the use of Starship for Artemis 3 at a Senate hearing in September but offered no alternative at the time. At a separate event Oct. 21, one day after Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said he would “open up” SpaceX’s Artemis 3 contract, Bridenstine declined to comment directly: “I’m going to leave it to him to make those decisions.”
At the symposium, Bridenstine was more direct. “Secretary Duffy, I think, is doing the absolute right thing,” he said.
He called for accelerated work on an alternative lander design, even suggesting the government invoke the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law that allows it to direct companies to prioritize work deemed critical to national security.
“If the goal is to beat China to the moon, we need to have a program that is, dare I say, a Defense Production Act kind of program,” he said. “We’re going all-in to build a landing system as quickly as possible with a team that would be a small team with authorities — maybe authorities put together by an executive order from the President of the United States — that this is a national security imperative that we’re going to beat China to the moon.”
He suggested such an effort could be organized as a “small Skunk Works-type organization,” referring to Lockheed Martin’s advanced development division.
Bridenstine emphasized he was not criticizing Starship itself. “Starship is a tremendously important vehicle for the future,” he said. “It’s going to deliver large mass to low Earth orbit for a long time, and it’s going to drive down costs and increase access.”
“But if you need a moon lander, it’s going to take time,” he added.
Bolden, who led NASA during the Obama administration, echoed Bridenstine’s concerns. “I did not recognize the architecture when I came back to thinking about NASA again after Jim had left office,” he said.
“How did we get back here where we now need 11 launches to get one crew to the moon?” he said, referring to the multiple refueling flights needed for Starship. “We’re never going to get there.”
He expressed doubt that NASA could land humans on the moon by the end of President Trump’s term or before China’s first crewed landing. “We cannot make it if we say we’ve got to do it by the end of this term,” he said. “Let’s be real, okay? Everybody in this room knows, to say we’re going to do it by the end of the term, or we’re going to do it before the Chinese, that doesn’t help industry.”
Bolden said it may be acceptable for China to land humans on the moon before the United States returns, provided NASA’s approach is better in some way. “They’re going to put a human on the moon in 2030,” he said of China. “We may not make 2030 and that’s ok with me, as long as we get there in 2031 better than they are with what they have there.”
Alternative plans
The comments from Bolden and Bridenstine followed other conference sessions where companies discussed potential alternatives for getting humans to the lunar surface.
Jacki Cortese, senior director of civil space at Blue Origin, said Oct. 28 that the company had just begun work with NASA on ways to accelerate lunar lander development. She declined to provide details, citing competition-sensitive information.
“We have a lot of ideas,” she said, suggesting they build on the company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, an uncrewed vehicle expected to make its first flight in the next few months. The Mark 1 design is significantly smaller than the Mark 2 lander Blue Origin is developing for Artemis 5 and later missions but does not require in-space propellant transfer.
“With Mark 1 and some of the preceding work we’re doing, we have what we think are some good ideas about maybe a more incremental approach that could be used for an acceleration-type scenario,” she said.
Lockheed Martin, which is not currently part of NASA’s Human Landing System program, has also shown interest in developing an alternative lander. Bob Behnken, vice president of exploration and technology strategy at Lockheed Martin Space, said Oct. 20 that the company had done “significant technical and programmatic analysis” of crewed landers that could be adapted for an accelerated program.
“This idea is, if we need a Plan B, what is the fastest thing that we could do,” said Tim Cichan, chief architect for commercial civil space at Lockheed Martin, on another pane Oct. 28l.
He described a two-stage design, with a descent element that remains on the lunar surface while the ascent element returns astronauts to Orion. “You save a lot of propellant when you leave the descent element on the surface,” he said, adding that it could later be repurposed as infrastructure for a lunar base. The ascent stage could also be reused.
The same architecture, he said, could deliver large cargo payloads to the surface. “The intent there is, let’s add another system that, from today, can move as fast as possible with as little risk as possible, using parts that actually exist right now,” he said. “That might be the fastest way.”
“It’s an idea that’s out there,” he concluded. “We’ll see where it goes.”
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