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For now, the U.S. government is the dominant customer and the results of the November 5 election have reopened the question of whether it will remain committed to sustained lunar exploration and utilization or pivot to Mars.

Artemis is designed to be a steppingstone to Mars, but NASA doesn’t envision people on the Red Planet until the 2040s. Musk talks about getting them there in this decade with launches of as many as five uncrewed Starships in 2026 and, if those go well, crewed flights in 2028. While crewed flights that soon seem extremely unlikely, spending money to address the technical and health challenges while at the same time funding Artemis would be formidable. SpaceX has more than $4 billion in contracts from NASA to build a Human Landing System version of Starship to put astronauts on the Moon. The question is whether that money might be diverted into Mars exploration instead.

Focusing on “why” the Moon, as Sherwood points out, may be more critical than ever in the coming months.

One thing participants in the first panel agreed on is that NASA is in for change. Garver asserted that while she is known as leading “the most disruptive transition team ever” between the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, “I’m not going to hold that record any more.” Autry added that Musk’s “interest in small government exceeds [his] interest in space architecture and you better look at that because the challenges I think NASA faces are much more organizational and cultural than they are technical.”

Pace thinks Musk’s biggest impact will be on personnel because “people are policy” and “they are going to be very focused on getting stuff done.” He anticipates the words used by then-Vice President Mike Pence at the beginning of the Artemis program will take on more impetus — to get it done “by any means necessary.”

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An asteroid hitting a neutron star could release enough energy to power humanity for 100 million years, more than enough to explain fast radio bursts!

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