Starship is not the future on Moon mission if the US wants to get a manned mission there before the Chinese. Starship v2 is far behind where it should be because of all the Biden shenanigans.
Right now, it would take 6 Starship refuelings just to get to the moon and orbit. The lunar orbiter is still in the design stage, and is too big to fit in Starship fairing. So that would be multiple trips with multiple refuelings just to get that assembled.
Why do they need it? Because there is no provision to put a fueling station on the moon. In fact there is no provision to refuel the Starship in any case.
Worse, the Starship and its booster both would have to be man-rated - that’s months/years of testing all successfully.
But all of that aside, StarShip has to do many test refuelings to prove the concept. More months/years of testing all successfully.
Plus there is no Starship crew escape on landing - more months/years of testing all successfully.
Its unlikely, as things stand now, that the US will get a man on the moon until well after the Chinese set up their stations on the surface.
The only way to get there quickly is to get Artemis up and running - its a straight shot with no refuelings. It can take the Lunar Orbiter and the crew in one shot.
Why is that? Because StarShip is very heavy - its stainless steel after all. Artemis is light weight composite and so can lift more weight and ‘throw’ it farther.
Agreed. Starship is built for an entirely different mission: to colonize Mars. Musk envisions having to build thousands of them in contrast to just a handful of SLS’s for Artemis. To that end, cost and speed of construction were prioritized for Starship. It’s heavy but cheap and quick to build. But of course that comes with a severe performance penalty.
There are indeed problems with the plan ...