Sending humans to the Moon, landing, taking off, rendezvousing with the mother craft, and returning safely to Earth isn't as simple as it sounds.
Even though the U.S. has done all that six times (with one near-catastrophe during Apollo 13), each mission could have easily ended in disaster. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, those missions, fraught as they were, seemed worth the risk given the geopolitical competition with the Soviets.
Today, we're in a new space race with China. Many people at NASA, on the Hill, in the White House, and in private industry believe similar risks are necessary to win that race. The prize is the South Pole of the Moon, where an unknown quantity of water ice hides in the cracks and crevices of Shackleton Crater. Is it enough to support a small Moon base? A larger colony? We won't know until we get there. Whoever gets there first can write their own ticket, using the water ice to create breathable air, hydrogen fuel, and almost every other resource needed for permanent habitation on the lunar surface.
NASA has a three-step plan to make that vision a reality. To achieve it, NASA plans 70 Moon missions between now and the end of 2036, with 45 of them by 2032.
"We’re not reaching for the home run on the first swing,” says NASA’s Moon base program manager, Carlos García-Galán. “We have very specific goals, and the first objectives are achieving high-reliability access to the surface.”
"NASA says it expects at least a half dozen companies to try to make landings by the end of 2029," reports Spectrum. "It has called for seven landings in 2027 and another seven in 2028, just for starters."
If that succeeds, phase two, between 2029 and 2032, would include the first infrastructure—power systems, communications networks, perhaps the first pressurized rover for astronauts, supplied by Japan’s space agency.
Finally, in phase three, astronauts from NASA’s Artemis project would start to spend extended periods at the base. There would probably be fewer but bigger supply missions over time; NASA initially projected it would have to land 4,000 kilograms of equipment in phase one, 60,000 kg in phase two, and 150,000 kg in phase three, with landing ships large enough by then to carry up to 8,000 kg at a time.
"NASA’s business approach, for more than a decade, has been to let private companies run actual missions where practical; NASA acts as a 'customer,' providing basic funding and sending payloads on each flight," according to Spectrum.
“Let’s not invest $1 billion in just one thing,” says García-Galán. “Let’s invest $1 billion in 10 things and see which ones work and use that in phase two.”
It's a sound strategy if you're trying to build a better automobile or bicycle. Just because one thing works once doesn't mean the same thing will work on multiple missions. Did they get lucky? Or were conditions for launch and landing perfect?
"Blue Ghost 2 [manufactured by Firefly Aerospace] has thousands of potential failure points, and there is almost no room for error," reports Spectrum. "Two ships sent by a competitor, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, reached the moon’s near side in 2024 and 2025 but fell over on landing and returned little useful data."
Another competitor, Peregrine Mission One, by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, missed the Moon entirely after "a single helium valve wouldn’t seat properly."
There is a survival-of-the-fittest quality to the moon base plan. Companies are given contracts of US $100 million to $200 million to execute moon missions; for the most part, there will be no government bailouts if they run behind or have technical problems. That means there will undoubtedly be winners and losers: In July, NASA and the nonprofit Draper Laboratory agreed to cancel a contract for a landing attempt; the mission had been targeted for 2025 but was running behind by at least five years.
Five years is obviously not good enough when you’re trying to put down roots near the lunar south pole before China does. NASA is pressing companies to get missions going in two years or even less. In June it signed contracts with three companies—Astrobotic, Firefly, and Intuitive Machines—to try to send landing missions in 2028.
Winners and losers is a fine idea. But we're dealing with highly sophisticated, even experimental technology. These companies are getting billions of dollars in private investment. With the prospect of losing it all in a "winner-take-all" race to build out lunar launch capability, it seems like a high-stakes gamble that investors will be reluctant to risk.
