Last week, NASA’s acting administrator proposed studying alternatives to SpaceX’s Starship to send astronauts to the Moon before China does. SpaceX has just published a blunt response.
A paradigm shift. The self-imposed moon race against China has made the United States forget the real reason why NASA chose SpaceX’s gigantic Starship for its return to the Moon.
As SpaceX itself has been responsible for remembering in an extensive publication full of images, technical details and advances that we were unaware of, its Starship HLS (Human Landing System) is not a lunar landing module like that of the Apollo missions: it is a paradigm shift designed to build a permanent lunar base.
Size comparison between Starship HLS and the Apollo lunar module
This is Starship HLS. The comparison is almost comical. While the Apollo lunar module, which took the first humans to the Moon, measured seven meters high, Starship HLS will rise vertically to 52 meters.
To put it in terms of room to stretch your legs: The Apollo lunar module had the habitable volume of a wardrobe (4.5 cubic meters). The Lanyue spacecraft that the Chinese astronauts will use has twice the volume. Starship, according to SpaceX itself, will have two-thirds of the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station (613 cubic meters).
What’s more, the SpaceX ship will have two airlocks for exits to the surface. Each of them will have a habitable volume of 13 cubic meters, which means that a single Starship airlock is more spacious than the Chinese lunar landing module that NASA is so concerned about.
Render of the Starship HLS cone inside
A luxury apartment. If the size comparison wasn’t enough, new renders of Starship’s interior show a level of comfort that no spaceship has ever had outside of sci-fi movies.
Forget the image of astronauts crammed into an aluminum can. What we see is a spacious, multi-story interior, with a clean and futuristic aesthetic. There is a spiral staircase, a control area with multiple seats and a bay window offering panoramic views of the lunar surface.
Astronauts inside Starship HLS
A beast of burden. Starship is not designed to carry new American flags to the Moon. As SpaceX has been responsible for remembering, it is designed to fulfill the initial promise of NASA’s Artemis program: to create a “permanent and sustainable presence on the Moon”, building a lunar base.
Starship cargo variants will be able to land up to 100 tons directly on the lunar surface. This includes pressurized and non-pressurized rovers, nuclear reactors for power generation like the one NASA wants to install before China, and prefabricated lunar habitats.
2026 will be the moment of truth. SpaceX says it has completed 49 key milestones in Starship’s development, including demonstrations of life support systems, testing of landing legs, qualification of the docking adapter, and demonstrations of the elevator and airlock.
However, the big obstacle remains refueling ships in orbit to compensate for the evaporation of cryogenic fuel, something that SpaceX hopes to achieve in 2026 with the new Starship V3. Without fuel transfer in orbit, Starship cannot reach the Moon with its crew and its 100 tons of cargo.
Images | SpaceX
In WorldOfSoftware | The enormous size of Starship, in images that give an idea of its scale
In WorldOfSoftware | A genius named Tom Mueller designed the engines for the Falcon 9. And now that genius wants to beat SpaceX on its own turf
