[By Guancha Net Columnist Bai Yujing]

Almost no one anticipated that the Artemis program, America's manned lunar landing initiative, would collapse in this manner.

In May 2025, a NASA budget draft from the White House was publicly proposed: after completing the "Artemis" III and IV missions, it is recommended to retire the SLS (Space Launch System) super-heavy rocket and the "Orion" spacecraft, and terminate the construction plan of the "Lunar Gateway". This proposal has not yet been formally approved by Congress, but it has already caused an earthquake-like reaction.

The American lunar landing super-rocket SLS will be retired after only four flights, including its single successful mission. It is considered the most expensive and least used large rocket in history. Image source: NASA

It should be noted that the SLS rocket and the Lunar Gateway were once seen as the twin pillars of America's return to the Moon and ultimately Mars. They are the core pillars of the Artemis program and also the largest fiscal and political investment targets for NASA in recent years.

As early as the Obama era, the SLS rocket had been initiated, receiving substantial resource investments from traditional aerospace giants such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The Lunar Gateway, on the other hand, was a symbol of NASA's "sustainable lunar landing" vision and was even described as "the first orbital outpost for human exploration of deep space."

Over the past five years, whether during budget negotiations under the Biden administration or Trump's return to the White House, almost everyone believed that despite being expensive and slow, the political inertia behind SLS and the Lunar Gateway was too great to be easily shaken. Behind them were not only NASA, but also votes in Congress, long-term expectations from the Pentagon, and even symbolic significance for America's return to cosmic narratives.

Now, with the White House budget proposal merging them into retirement in a draft, the prospects of the entire Artemis program have become blurred. This is not just a financial document; it is a heavy blow to the "national lunar landing ambition."

Testing of the SLS super-rocket's boosters creates an expensive spectacle. Even the U.S. finds it difficult to sustain. Image source: NASA

Why did they dare to cut the untouchable big rocket?

Cutting SLS is both logical and unexpected.

Since its inception in 2011, this rocket has been constantly delayed, with budgets repeatedly exceeding estimates. Just the development costs amounted to $24 billion, with each launch costing $4 billion. Compared to SpaceX's "Starship" project, its inefficiency and high cost have reached their peak. Even former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine warned: "Each launch is so expensive that we will eventually struggle to maintain the long-term operation of this system."

However, over the past decade, SLS has never truly faced the risk of cancellation. The reason lies not in its technological advancement but in its deep political roots.

It is a typical product of "congressional rockets," involving interest distribution across major aerospace states such as Alabama, Florida, and Texas. The SLS disperses engines, core stages, solid boosters, and upper stages to different contractors, with every component representing votes and jobs. Canceling it would not only damage NASA's reputation but also directly impact the electoral base of senators and representatives.

This "geographically distributed construction" method may not be efficient, but it is extremely beneficial for ensuring the project's survival. Even in the face of repeated cost-limiting realities set by Musk, SLS still survived. As a result, the consensus that "it's too expensive for anyone to cut" spread throughout the aerospace circle for many years.

So, why did the Trump administration finally take action today?

The answer might lie at the intersection of three points: First, Trump's overall trend of compressing federal budgets has already been established, and NASA could not remain unscathed. Second, while "Starship" has not yet succeeded, its reusable potential continues to pressure SLS. Third, there has been a lack of unified domestic consensus on "crewed lunar landings." SLS and Orion are increasingly becoming symbolic systems for "landing on the moon for the sake of landing," making it difficult to gain new political patience.

This budget draft may not be the final order, but it is like a brick thrown at the door. It has clearly written down the problem that everyone knew was "impossible to do" in black and white for the first time.

Conceptual image of the Lunar Gateway station. Originally positioned as a key hub for lunar and Martian landings, it was intended to be humanity's first space station far from Earth. Image source: NASA

The awkward fate of the Lunar Gateway

If the "cutting" of the SLS rocket was shocking, then the fate of the Lunar Gateway station is more like a quiet farewell.

In the initial concept of "Artemis," the Lunar Gateway was positioned as a small orbital space station operating in a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon. It was intended to serve as a transfer node for lunar landings and also had multiple functions such as long-term stay in deep space, orbital scientific experiments, and docking with future Mars missions. NASA referred to it as an "important stepping stone for human deep space exploration" and even hinted that it would become the "forward outpost" of space activities for decades to come.

However, reality is more complex than vision. First, in the upcoming "Artemis" III mission, the Lunar Gateway will be completely bypassed. After the SLS rocket launches the "Orion" spacecraft, it will directly dock with SpaceX's "Starship" lunar lander in lunar orbit before heading to the surface. This "direct connection mode" indicates that, at critical nodes, the gateway is not "necessary for landing" but rather an additional orbital facility.

Second, the structure of the gateway itself is complex, requiring extremely high docking precision and operates in an orbit far from Earth, making construction and maintenance costs extremely high. Although the first modules PPE and HALO have been largely completed and are ready for final assembly, the launch time has been repeatedly postponed and is currently tentatively scheduled for 2027. Subsequent international modules such as I-HAB and the Canadian robotic arm lack clear timelines. This "mini-space station" has yet to be born, and its fate remains undecided.

Most crucially, the construction of the gateway faces an unavoidable issue: its functional definition has always been vague. Was it built to reduce SLS payload pressure and stage progress? Or to give international partners a share? Or to serve deep space research? By 2025, people were still divided in opinions, and NASA has yet to provide a sufficiently convincing and short-term effective answer.

In Trump's new budget draft, the Lunar Gateway is prominently listed among those recommended for cancellation. Unlike SLS's massive inertia and political ties, the gateway clearly lacks equivalent "protection charms." Its international cooperation background is rich, but its political interests are scattered; its technical concepts are advanced, but its practical value has yet to be validated.

Thus, it became the first link to be "abandoned." Not because it was the least useful, but because it was the easiest to discard.

And when a deep space node once considered the "future outpost" can be relegated to obscurity by a single budget draft, people are forced to reconsider a heavy question: Does America still want to seriously pursue lunar landings?

With the SLS super-rocket and the Lunar Gateway station gone, the unfortunate child, the Orion crewed spacecraft, also met its end. Image source: NASA

Has the American national team withdrawn?

Cutting SLS and abandoning the Lunar Gateway does not mean that the United States is withdrawing from space. On the contrary, this may be a significant shift in direction.

From the signals released in the White House budget draft, the Trump administration prefers to concentrate resources on goals that promise greater returns—Mars, private spaceflight, military space assets, as well as artificial intelligence and deep space exploration technology. This approach is understandable, given the internal skepticism about repeated lunar landings in the U.S., especially under economic downturns and fiscal tightening. Spending hundreds of billions on a project already achieved in the last century significantly reduces its political appeal.

But the problem lies in this sudden "strategic contraction," which represents a structural blow to the entire U.S. manned space program.

SLS and the Gateway are not just "technological products"; they are the foundation of NASA's operations and project chains. Once they are cut, the entire Artemis system will rapidly collapse: existing production chains, cooperative mechanisms, lunar landing paths, orbital plans, and international collaboration frameworks... will all need to be rebuilt from scratch. Moreover, "Starship" has yet to complete its first orbital flight and is far from stable reuse. Relying solely on it to support America's deep space ambitions is unrealistic.

This also means that the U.S. is likely to take a step back first in the lunar landing race against China. China's "Chang'e," "Queqiao," "Mengtian," and other series of missions are steadily advancing, and achieving manned lunar landings by 2030 seems to be just a matter of time; whereas the U.S. is gradually losing momentum in terms of finance, politics, and technological competition.

The positioning and role of the Long March X are very clear, and its method of lunar landing is simple and elegant.

Divergence in U.S. and Chinese lunar landing routes: "getting there" versus "staying there"

If Trump's budget adjustment dealt a severe blow to confidence in the "Artemis" program, further inquiry reveals the reason: the U.S. made something "simple" overly complicated.

Both China and the U.S. consider manned lunar landings as the next phase of their space strategy, but their technological approaches and mindsets contrast sharply. China's manned lunar landing plan does not rely on external nodes such as the Gateway but uses a two-launch Long March X and a single near-lunar orbital rendezvous to directly achieve landing and return.

According to the interpretation of China's Manned Space Engineering Office, in this model, the manned spacecraft and lunar lander enter lunar orbit separately and dock. One astronaut remains in orbit while two others land on the Moon and drive a lunar rover for inspection tours. They then rendezvous and return in orbit. The entire path is clear, closed-loop, and risks are controlled within reasonable limits, embodying a pragmatic engineering logic of "getting there first."

America's "Artemis" program originally aimed to build the Lunar Gateway as an orbital transfer node to achieve the future blueprint of "reusability and long-term habitation." However, the problem lies in the fact that—this plan has陷入 self-imposed constraints even before achieving the first landing due to budget, politics, and supply chain issues. The Gateway has not sent a single module, the lunar lander is still in its validation phase, the launch cost of the Orion spacecraft remains high, and the SLS rocket has been proposed for retirement after just one launch. A detour lunar landing path has been compressed by reality into a technical tragedy of "drawing too big a pie that cannot be realized."

In essence, America is thinking about "how to stay longer," while China is thinking about "how to get there first." Landing on the Moon is the threshold for manned deep space exploration. It should not be complicated or mystified, nor should it lose its rhythm due to a bold architectural gamble.

NASA attempted to leapfrog the thresholds of "going" and "staying" by tying the entire plan to the readiness of the Gateway and the uncertainty of the lunar lander. In contrast, China's approach is clear and continuous: the first step is successful landing, the second step is expanding duration and frequency of missions, and the third step may involve the rollout of gateways, refueling, lunar bases, and even Mars missions.

In this sense, China's lunar landing plan is not "conservative" but represents a cautious yet pragmatic engineering philosophy. In the long-term global competition of aerospace technology, the rhythm is far more important than bold declarations. Manned spaceflight is not a demonstration but a relay. If the first leg cannot be run steadily, subsequent relay setups are merely fantasies.

To conclude, we use one sentence as the epitaph for the U.S. lunar super-rocket and the Lunar Gateway: America's return to the Moon plan was "complicated" due to overly ambitious strategic design, mismatched execution capability, and national strength; China's solution is pragmatic and steady, with a simple and elegant realization under realistic national conditions. Discussing gateways and habitation after lunar landing aligns better with the task rhythm.

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Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7501206284566430218/

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