Could the United States lose the race back to the Moon because of its own engineering and programmatic choices? That was the underlying tension in a recent House subcommittee hearing, as lawmakers and veteran space leaders faced up to a clearly mounting risk that China could land astronauts on the lunar surface before NASA’s Artemis program achieves its first crewed landing.
At the center of it all was former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who gave a blunt assessment of the current architecture of Artemis. The plan is dependent on a Human Landing System based on SpaceX’s Starship, which must be refueled in low Earth orbit before it can depart for the Moon. That refueling would require an unknown but potentially quite large number of Starship tanker launches up to 12 by one SpaceX internal estimate and is reliant on cryogenic propellant transfer, a capability that has never been demonstrated in space. Griffin warned the extended loiter time required for multiple refueling flights would almost certainly cause boil-off of the liquid oxygen and methane propellants, rendering the mission not viable. “An architecture which requires a high number of refueling flights in low-Earth orbit… is very unlikely to work unlikely to the point where I will say it cannot work,” he told lawmakers.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has similarly voiced concerns, showing that the cryogenic transfer-capable version of Starship is running behind schedule and technology remains one of the highest risk elements for Artemis 3. Panelist Paul Hill emphasized that while the rapid cadence of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has indeed driven reliability, competing priorities between Starship’s commercial applications and its lunar variant could push the crewed landing “years late” beyond the 2027 target.
If anything, the systematic advance provided by China provides a stark contrast: the moon program focused on the Chang’e missions has been ticking off a series of on-schedule milestones: Chang’e 4 landed on the far side; Chang’e 5 returned samples. A 2026 South Pole landing comes next, followed by an International Lunar Research Station by 2028, then a crewed mission targeted in 2030. According to Dean Cheng of the Potomac Institute, centralized governance is responsible for “programmatic stability, budgetary stability, staff stability” over decades, constituting a structural advantage over NASA’s shifting priorities across administrations. Beyond architecture, witnesses and lawmakers pointed to deeper systemic issues with contracting.
For more than a decade, the NASA Orion spacecraft, the SLS, and related ground systems have seen multi‑year delays and billions in overruns under cost‑plus contracts. Those deals reimburse contractors for all allowable expenses plus profit, giving them little incentive to control costs or meet schedules. “If they fail to deliver on time and on budget… there need to be consequences,” Cheng said, pressing for a move toward competitive, fixed‑price models that have worked well on programs including Commercial Crew and CLPS. CLPS itself was cited as a model for accelerating lunar capabilities through private‑sector competition. The program has issued firm fixed‑price contracts to 14 U.S. companies for robotic lunar deliveries, encouraging rapid iteration and cost discipline.
Providers like Intuitive Machines and ispace are now transitioning from demonstration to regular flight cadence, with missions addressing technically demanding targets such as the Moon’s far side requiring deployment of dedicated relay satellites for communications and the rugged, shadowed terrain of the South Pole. These areas are of high strategic interest for their potential water ice deposits, which could be converted into propellant or life‑support resources. Yet even CLPS demonstrates the complexity of lunar operations.
Precision landing in polar regions requires threading narrow illuminated plateaus between deep craters, while thermal extremes and lengthy periods of darkness stress power and thermal control systems. The automated landing systems have to work perfectly; there is no real‑time human intervention as there was with Apollo. Commercial partners also are testing infrastructure concepts, such as leaving communications assets in lunar orbit for use by future missions, to avoid “reinventing the wheel” for each landing.
The stakes go well beyond prestige. Griffin and others underscored that the country which first establishes a sustained lunar presence will enjoy disproportionate influence to shape norms regarding resource utilization and surface access. But, if China gets there first, it could also leverage that advantage in order to monopolize strategically valuable sites. For the U.S., this makes Artemis a geopolitical instrument, as well as a technical program-one now under scrutiny for whether its engineering choices, contracting practices, and political stability can deliver before the window closes.
