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Posted on 03/24/2026 2:35:45 PM PDT by DFG
NASA is cancelling plans to deploy a space station in lunar orbit and will instead use its components to construct a $20 billion base on the moon’s surface over the next seven years, its new chief Jared Isaacman said on Tuesday.
Isaacman, who was sworn in at the agency in December, made the announcement at the opening of a day-long event at NASA’s Washington headquarters at which he outlined a raft of changes he is making to the agency’s flagship moon program Artemis.
“It should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface,” Isaacman told delegates at the event.
The Lunar Gateway station, largely already built with contractors Northrop Grumman and Lanteris Space Systems, owned by Intuitive Machines, was meant to be a space station parked in a lunar orbit. Repurposing the craft for a lunar surface base is not simple.
“Despite some of the very real hardware and schedule challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives,” Isaacman said.
Lunar Gateway was designed to serve as both a research platform and a transfer station that astronauts would use to board the moon landers before descending to the lunar surface.
The changes imposed by Isaacman on the flagship US moon program in recent weeks are reshaping billions of dollars worth of contracts under the Artemis effort.
That is sending companies scrambling to accommodate the extra urgency as China makes progress toward its own 2030 moon landing.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Shorter than the California bullet train.
Jut cut the red tape and give Elon the $20B and tell him what you want.
And fire everyone at NASA in this project.
I’m not thinking 20 billion will be the ultimate ask.
Wow that’s cheap. Somali fraud is about what it costs to build a base on the moon!
Unless scientists make a tremendous breakthrough in longevity, not in your lifetime.
The operative language is what plans NASA is canceling.
All other plans discussed in the article are aspirational and bound to be the subject of a future announcement of cancellation.
A trillion dollars and 50 years if NASA does it
Yeah. Musk will have a base on the moon before the US.
How long will it take us to spend a hundred billion?
That depends on the number of no-show and no-work contracts awarded.
More bankrupting boondoggles!
Not how much, but why?
They’ll have to build a Home Depot up there first.
Agreed. Elon would get it done.
NASA? Look at their history. They would be lucky to get a wheel barrow to the moon.
A base on the moon... for 20 billion. Say what you will, but NASA has a wonderful sense of humor.
Are we going to get Mexicans to build it?
Will the moon base have wildlife overpass crossings?
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