The day the United States dispatched astronauts to the moon for the first time in 54 years coincided with SpaceX’s first public offering. And the timing is right: this is probably the final time NASA will attempt to transport humans into deep space without significant support from a business that came out of the venture-backed tech scene.
The second Bush administration started building a massive rocket and a spaceship named Orion to return to the moon, which is where NASA’s current lunar campaign got its starAfter going over budget by 2010, the project was scaled back and combined with a new initiative to support private firms developing new orbital rockets.
This choice resulted in the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which is currently transporting three Americans and one Canadian around the moon and back, as well as a contract that saved SpaceX’s business and a surge of startup finance into extraterrestrial technology.
The SLS is currently the world’s most potent operational rocket.In preparation for this week’s momentous trip, which will establish a record for the furthest humans have traveled into the solar system, it has only flown once before, when it launched an empty Orion spacecraft on a test flight around the moon.
However, SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will be under pressure the next time.The two businesses are vying to be the first to set foot on the lunar regolith.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin, NASA’s heritage contractors, produced SLS and Orion with assistance from Airbus Defense and Space in Europe. While SpaceX was operating a fleet of inexpensive reusable rockets and initiating a large cycle of investment in private space, they were also expensive, delayed, and over budget.
NASA believed it had to remain with the SLS and Orion when it made the decision to return to the moon in 2019.
However, a means of carrying men from orbit to the lunar surface was still lacking. NASA determined that the new generation of venture-backed space companies would provide that.Additionally, the CIA hired a few private space firms, such as Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines, to deploy robotic landers for testing and reconnaissance.
In 2021, SpaceX secured the contract to utilize its Starship rocket as a lander.It was a contentious choice.It will take a dozen or more launches to fuel the massive rocket with enough propellant for the trip to the moon.NASA decided to postpone an effort to land on the moon and restart its mission after years of waiting for the spaceship.
Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told Congress last year, “This is an architecture that no NASA administrator that I am aware of would have chosen had they had the chance,” pointing out that the choice had been taken without a Senate-confirmed head of the organization.
In order to develop its own human landing system, Blue Origin joined the team in 2023.
It appears that the agency is now preparing a bakeoff:In advance of two possible landings in 2028, NASA will test Orion’s capacity to meet one or both landers in orbit in 2027.Blue Origin’s intentions to test out its lander on the moon sometime this year and SpaceX’s upcoming Starship test, which may take place this month, will be under more scrutiny as a result.
Under the new NASA administrator, billionaire payments entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who financed SpaceX to fly on two space flights and was endorsed by Musk as the ideal candidate, there has been a significant revamp of the program this year.He was nominated for the position by President Donald Trump, had his candidacy revoked, and was then nominated again. When he took office in late 2025, he had to make a number of tough decisions regarding how to get back to the moon.
In March, Isaacman abandoned plans to create a lunar space station dubbed Gateway and to invest in costly improvements for SLS, which had long been viewed by outside observers as wasteful or politically motivated. He is now fully committed to the next wave of commercial space firms.
However, any delays or mistakes will be viewed in a geopolitical light because China is on its own methodical route to send one of its citizens to the moon by 2030.In the practical domains of robotics and electric vehicles, Silicon Valley has so far been unable to outperform Chinese firms.Silicon Valley will have an opportunity to demonstrate that it can still control the technological frontier by pursuing the moon, but SpaceX has become the company that businesspeople throughout the Pacific region aspire to imitate.
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