NASA Will Spend $2,941,394,557 On SpaceX's Massive Lunar Starship Lander!!!

Many people were surprised yesterday when news leaked that NASA was awarding all the funding from the Artemis Human Landing System program to SpaceX with its massive Lunar Starship project. SpaceX's price tag is about $2.9 billion with a commitment to fund half of it themselves. While most space watchers could see why SpaceX had made it to the final round most of us didn't expect it to be the only choice because it was so unlike what NASA was asking for.
However the HLS program only got 1/3 of the money it needed from Congress and with time marching on NASA had to make a decision and the only option with a price tag that fit was SpaceX.

There's much more info in

[theexchipmunk]

You know? If starship really turns out as planned, there is definitely going to be a running gag for a good amount of time about Starship not actually docking to stations, but stations docking to starship.

[nagarjunkashyap]

I was watching the soyuz MS 18 launch and apparently they have a Russian priest bless the rocket and crew. Now I really want to see Scott going to the first Artremis crew just before boarding Orion and tell them - I'm Scott Manley, fly safe.

[TheZoltan-]

Elon Musk: "Time to simplify things. Let's dock the station to the lander..."

[wecsam]

Congress: cuts NASA funding
NASA: chooses the only affordable option
Congress: surprised Pikachu

[toastrecon]

It's almost comical that the shot of Starship on the Moon looks so much like the old Duck Dodgers and Marvin the Martian cartoons. Amazing.

[nfoleg]

To see this skyscraper flying to the moon and back in one piece will be extraordinary.

[LabRatJason]

@11:20 are we just going to ignore the fact that someone put "new raptor who dis?" on one of the engines? I'm dying!

[oliverlane]

This is like sailing accross the atlantic in a small yacht and then using a cruise ship as a tender to disembark in port.

[southernbreeze]

"this is not going to make many people in congress happy" glad to hear it, must be the right decision

[Cydonius]

Starship docking at lunar gateway is like a Death Star trying to dock with an imperial Destroyer

[nolansprojects]

“No, find an option that fits the budget we give you” “why the f*** did you choose SpaceX?!?!”

Sounds like the government.

[livethefuture]

Not to mention SpaceX has had a really strong relationship with NASA throughout the commercial crew program, and are currently the ONLY company to have ever sent astronauts into orbit.

[pihi]

And finally, I think the original Von Braun idea was really close to what Starship is. We had to go through the whole Apollo/Shuttle/Orion saga to get back to the Mothership.

[aplacefaraway]

During the press conference they should say "That's a question best answered using Kerbal Space Program"

[eugeneforge]

NASA: We would want to do some experiments while on the moon. How many do you have room for?

Space X: All of them.

[InvestmentJoy]

Pretty interested in hearing your opinion. After I saw the announcement yesterday the first opinion I wanted to hear on it was yours

[thierryvt]

11:22 on the leftmost engine: "new raptor, who dis?" lmao, someone has a sense of humor at spacex

[timondalton]

Scott: The National team's lander was 14 metres tall!
SpaceX: Hold my methane

[RCAvhstape]

Somewhere Werner von Braun is smiling. This is a lot closer to his old Collier's Magazine vision of lunar exploration than Apollo turned out to be.

[HiGhGuY]

It'll be like a cruel prank to the astronauts that take part in the Artemis program. They'll spend days in a capsule getting to the moon, then they'll transfer to a tiny -house- space station probably for a day or two, then they'll get into a "lander" that is bigger than the vehicle they flew from Earth in, and bigger than the "space station" to go down to the moon realizing how much better they'd have had it if they just left Earth in the Starship to begin with.