Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

As expected, Elon Musk responded yesterday with anger and insults to the announcement by interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy that he will consider other manned lunar landers besides Starship for the first Artemis landing on the Moon.

And as expected, our brainless and generally uneducated propaganda press grabbed the shiny object that Duffy had put out with this announcement to focus entirely on the public spat. Here is just a sampling of the typical reports:

• Axios: Musk rages at Trump’s Transportation head on X: He “is trying to kill NASA!”
• CNBC: Musk blasts Duffy after Artemis contract spat: He ‘is trying to kill NASA!’
• The Hill: Elon Musk: Sean ‘Dummy’ shouldn’t run NASA
• Politico: ‘Sean Dummy’: Musk and Duffy brawl over the future of NASA
• Washington Examiner: Musk says Trump transportation chief ‘Sean Dummy’ trying to ‘kill’ NASA
• Bloomberg: Musk Lobs Insults as NASA Hopeful Isaacman Praises Leader Duffy
• Ars Technica: Elon Musk just declared war on NASA’s acting administrator, apparently
• NBC: Elon Musk goes on a tirade after NASA says it will seek moon landers from SpaceX rivals

Not one of these articles reported the fact that Duffy’s announcement also included an admission that NASA is now delaying this manned Moon mission until 2028. Not one went into any depth as to why this program is delayed, if they discussed it at all. And any articles that did discuss the program’s overall slow pace, the focus was always entirely on SpaceX, as if its Starship program was the sole cause of all the problems. Essentially, they picked up Duffy’s talking points and ran with them, blindly. In fact, for almost all of these articles, it appeared as if the reporter was writing about NASA’s Artemis program for the first time, and really knew nothing about it.

Only the Ars Technica story attempted some thoughtful analysis, but it focused on the office politics of choosing NASA’s next administrator, missing entirely the fundamentals of this story, that the Artemis program is and has always been a mess, and that Duffy’s decision will do nothing to fix the problem.

Musk of course foolishly played into Duffy’s hands by reacting so violently, with insults, helping Duffy distract from the real issues. At the same time, Musk also spoke truth with this one tweet:

SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.

Duffy has done nothing to fix the fundamental problems with the Artemis program. It still relies on SLS, a flawed rocket that is too expensive, too cumbersome, and lacks sufficient power for the job. It is still relies on the Orion capsule to ferry astronauts to lunar orbit, even though its heat shield is fundamentally flawed and no in-space test of its environmental system (which keeps the astronauts alive) has yet occurred. It is still focused on depending on the Lunar Gateway space station for its long term lunar exploration, even though that station will not be manned regularly, is behind schedule, and is in an orbit that makes it more expensive in fuel to get to the lunar surface.

The program has no coherence. Its management has been a mess from the start, with every component (except SpaceX’s) going significantly over budget and behind schedule.

Damage to Orion’s heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”.
Nor has this issue been fixed.

And worst of all, it has made the schedule as its primary focus for when things will happen, not good engineering. Both Trump and Duffy want that manned lunar landing to occur before Trump leaves office, and to do it they will put four astronauts in Orion to circle the Moon next spring, even though its heat shield is not trustworthy and its environmental systems are untested. The schedule demands it! Doing another unmanned mission with a fixed heat shield would require another year of development, and make a lunar landing by 2028 impossible.

Musk is hinting at these issues with his tweet above. If that mission kills the astronauts, a distinct possibility, then this whole house of cards will collapse, and the feds are going to have to find another alternative. And SpaceX is the only one around providing it.