On July 8, a local news outlet published an interview with Jim Bridenstine, former head of NASA. He questioned the agency’s Artemis moon landing plan, arguing that the current design is far too complicated and that the development of the lunar landers is seriously behind schedule.
Bridenstine, who led NASA under President Trump and helped shape the initial roadmap for the Artemis program launched in 2017, now doubts the approach. He pointed out that the Apollo program in the 1960s was all about simplicity. “That’s why, eight years after John F. Kennedy declared we’d go to the moon, we actually made it,” he said. In contrast, the Artemis plan relies on two landers with overly complex designs.
Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator (Video screenshot)
Under the current plan from NASA’s new chief, the Artemis mission will use SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander. Both require multiple refueling stops in orbit just to get astronauts to the moon. A recent report from the NASA Inspector General estimates that Starship alone might need at least 15 extra launches to top off its fuel tanks for a single moon mission.
Bridenstine noted that both landers are already falling behind schedule and haven’t even reached orbit yet. “That’s the challenge we face—we still don’t have a working lander. No lander, no moon landing. It’s that simple. I’m worried that over time, we’re just digging ourselves into a hole,” he said.
“The beauty of Apollo was its brilliance in simplicity,” Bridenstine added. He urged the U.S. government to speed up the Artemis timeline, saying, “We need to build that lander as fast as possible, no matter the cost.”
The U.S. completed the unmanned Artemis 1 lunar flyby in November 2022 and the crewed Artemis 2 flyby in April of this year. But subsequent missions have faced repeated delays. NASA recently announced that the Artemis 3 mission, originally set for 2027, will now be a test in low Earth orbit, with the actual moon landing pushed to Artemis 4 or Artemis 5, targeted for 2028.