'We have lost a lot of time.' Former NASA chief says US needs to start over with moon landing plans or risk losing to China

"We have stuck to a plan that does not make sense."

©SpaceX

Former NASA administrator Michael Griffin pulled no punches about where he sees America's current Artemis moon landing program in Congressional testimony today.

Griffin testified alongside other witnesses at a hearing held in Washington D.C. on Thursday (Dec. 4) by the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives. The hearing, titled "Strategic Trajectories Assessing China’s Space Rise and the Risks to U.S. Leadership," was held to discuss the rapid development of China's space program and what that means for America's long-held dominance when it comes to space exploration.

And according to Griffin and the witnesses at the hearing, that dominance might soon cede to China due to policy decisions that continue to plague the Artemis program, NASA's current planned campaign of moon missions. "Sticking to a plan is important when the plan makes sense. China is sticking to a plan that makes sense. It looks a lot, in fact, like what the United States did for Apollo," Griffin said. "We have stuck to a plan that does not make sense."

 

Griffin said NASA and two consecutive presidential administrations have stuck to an Artemis moon landing architecture that "cannot work" and "poses a level of crew risk that should be considered unacceptable." The former NASA administrator reiterated a previous recommendation he made to Congress, arguing that NASA's Artemis 3 mission, currently planned for 2027, should be canceled  — along with every other Artemis mission  — so NASA and the U.S. government can rethink the whole plan for America's return to the moon.

"We should start over, proceeding with all deliberate speed," Griffin said. "We have lost a lot of me, and we may not be able to return to the moon before the Chinese execute their own first landing. Or we may; space is hard and despite the progress that China is making, mission success is guaranteed to no one. But though we may not win at this first step, we cannot cede the pursuit and leave the playing field to others."

NASA and SpaceX's current plan for Artemis 3 and other moon missions in the program relies on a complicated in-orbit refueling system. The current moon landing architecture requires a high number of SpaceX Starship launches in order to refuel the lander that would take NASA astronauts to the moon. The exact number still isn't even known, though SpaceX estimates it could require 12 Starship launches to fully refuel the lander. The concept also remains unproven; SpaceX intends to test Starship's in-flight refueling system on an upcoming launch.

Furthermore, Griffin added, the length of time the lander would need to remain in orbit while the refueling flights launch and rendezvous with it would "almost guarantee" the propellant loaded into the lunar lander would boil off before the mission proceeds. "I do not see a way with the current technology we have to overcome those problems, and therefore we should not pursue that line of approach," Griffin said.

Even SpaceX appears to doubt the current Artemis moon landing architecture. In internal company documents obtained by Politico, SpaceX estimates that September 2028 is the earliest timeline for a first crewed lunar landing attempt; however, according to publicly available information, NASA is still aiming for 2027 for that mission.

If Artemis 3 is delayed to late 2028, there will have been an average of two years between the first three Artemis program missions. The Apollo program, by comparison, launched each of its 11 missions an average of once every 4.5 months between 1968 and 1972

NASA's current acting administrator has even criticized SpaceX for being "behind" on its lunar lander and Starship development. In remarks made in October 2025, acting NASA chief Sean Duffy suggested the Trump administration might be looking for other companies to compete to build and launch NASA's next moon lander. "The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term, so I'm gonna open up the contract," Duffy told CNBC. "I'm gonna let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin."

But it could be that such programmatic instability is what is holding the United States back from committing to a moon landing program in the long-term, according to Dean Cheng, a China expert at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. Cheng told House representatives during the hearing that the bureaucratic structures of the Chinese government allow the nation to stick to plans over longer timelines than the U.S. government system allows. "China sticks to a plan. It creates a plan that sticks to it for decades," Cheng said. "And the benefit there is programmatic stability, budgetary stability, staff stability."

NASA, meanwhile, has been in a period of turmoil that has seen key science facilities lose capabilities, many flagship science missions put at risk of cancellation due to budget cuts, and thousands of personnel lost due to federal workforce reductions.

But whether or not the United States returns to the moon before China, former NASA chief Griffin said that the real risk is "failing to commit to what winning really means in the long run." Many U.S. government officials have stressed that whichever nation is able to establish a sustained presence on the moon first will have the privilege of establishing norms for how other nations can access and use lunar resources. If China manages to get a foothold on the moon ahead of the United States, it may be able to dictate who uses certain areas of the moon going forward, and how.

"I am confident that China fully understands this," Griffin said.

Quelle: SC