Summary
Elon Musk and his advisers are pressuring Trump to cancel NASA’s $24 billion Space Launch System (SLS), citing high costs and outdated technology.
GOP lawmakers from Alabama and Texas oppose the move due to job losses and national security concerns.
Critics favor SpaceX’s cheaper, reusable Starship, but supporters argue SLS has already flown successfully and is more powerful.
Former NASA administrator Bill Nelson believes SLS will survive, as Trump likely wants to be the president who oversees the next moon landing.
Switching to Starship, which is designed to get to space as fast as possible to beat their competition, is not better. Even if there weren’t a conflict of interest the size of Jupiter.
The NASA moonshot has been choosing hardware that will do what is asked of it every time and has known failure modes and fixes. Not the shiny new thing. That’s a good thing.
Starship or it’s successors may in the future be a good option. For the first experimental mission(s) it’s a ship designed for LEO and should not be pointed at the moon just because it is also rocket shaped.