The following concludes a conversation held on February 3, 2026—three days before the originally scheduled launch of Artemis II.
John: So you’re right. Artemis II is about to fly.
It is the equivalent of Apollo 8 in the sense that the reason Apollo 8 went and didn’t land was because the lander wasn’t ready yet. If Artemis II had a lander ready, we might consider attempting a landing, but we don’t because neither SpaceX or Blue Origin’s landers are ready yet.
That’s why they built the Artemis II mission to swing around and practice—to make sure they’re able to go the longest distance we’ve ever attempted.
Artemis III doesn’t need Gateway either, at least right now, the way it is. If it doesn’t, we won’t change it. That’s a landing mission. Right now, the push is for a 2028 lunar landing mission that puts two crew on the surface for seven days or so.
The lunar lander is called HLS (Human Landing System), which is the SpaceX lander for the Artemis III mission. They’re ahead of Blue Origin, so SpaceX would be the one doing the first one, although that can change in the future.
Starship launches into low Earth orbit, then roughly fifteen more SpaceX tanker launches are required to fully fuel Starship for the big burn to the moon, and the other lunar orbit burns to get the lander and crew to the surface and back.
Starship goes into the moon’s orbit and then waits for Artemis III to launch the four-person crew in Orion and dock with HLS in lunar orbit. Once docked, two of the crew get into the Starship lunar lander, undock from Orion, and head down to the moon’s surface. The other two crew stay in the Orion capsule and keep a watch out for their return.
On Apollo missions, it was a three-person crew to the moon, and only one person stayed in the Apollo capsule. The Artemis III landing mission goal is to beat the Chinese and be first on the moon again, but also to ensure we can stay in the future. Artemis III doesn’t require Gateway.
Artemis IV and beyond will include Gateway.
Gateway provides an invaluable cog in this whole wheel.
The power and propulsion element, which is solar electric propulsion, and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), which is basically a mini module where humans can reside, will go up together in what they call the Co-manifested Vehicle. It’s going to launch in late 2027 and go into Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit, which is basically a long name for a lunar polar orbit that enables missions to the moon or Mars without a lot of propulsion costs.
The orbit is 3,000 kilometers above the moon’s surface on the low side and 70,000 kilometers on the high side. Since it’s a polar orbit, the Gateway and spacecraft traveling there can operate and watch everything going on in the South Pole region, which is where the 3000 km perilune (the point in an orbit around the moon where a spacecraft is at its minimum distance from the moon’s center) is located.
What’s cool about the difference in the architecture is you can bring in the lander, dock it, and just let it hang out until the crew comes. Lunar landers can be unmanned and remain docked to Gateway when not performing moon or Mars missions.
The crew then comes on an Artemis mission—Artemis IV in this case—and docks to the axial port of the HALO (there are three different docking ports). Two crews transfer through the HALO module into the lunar lander, land on the surface, stay for a week or two (longer than what we were able to do on the Apollo missions), then return to Gateway, dock the lander again, then transfer back into Orion to go back home.
The lander can remain there for future use if it’s still in good shape. You can use that lander for subsequent missions. On Apollo, the lunar landers were always disposed. This new Gateway model allows us to be like a docking carport where you’re leaving your car at the departure airport while you’re gone.
The next phase is they start adding tinkertoys to the Gateway like I-Hab, which is the ESA (European Space Agency) module. It’s a habitation module that has a lot more capabilities. They have a dissimilar redundancy to HALO, so you’ve got two modules that the crew can operate in.
After that, you add an ERM mission (ESPRIT Refueling Module)—basically a gas station in space to refill the Gateway tanks. The ERM also includes 6 windows that allow a 360-degree view of the moon, the Earth, or deep space, so the crew can see anything. That’s what’s cool about it. This capability is called “Luna view.” The windows are 60 degrees apart, so you can see 360 degrees around. ERM launches in 2031-ish.
For the refueling capability, there is Xenon for the solar electric propulsion, and monomethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide for the chemical capabilities.
The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, which is the UAE, will bring up their airlock so we can start doing space walks.
Canada’s bringing another Canadian arm that they can put on the outside and do walks just like we do today on the ISS.
So then we’ll have a full-blown capability to do research, missions, and commercialization-type things. I’m one of those pushing very hard for us to be able to commercialize a lot of this stuff and make money. There’s a lot of things that need to be done around the moon.
For example, we don’t have a GPS capability around the Moon.
We need to just set that up there like we did for Earth. Every one of our phones is tied to this. When we drive, nobody even looks at a map anymore because it’s on GPS. The moon doesn’t have that today. You’d have to add those kinds of things, like communications assets.
These are the kinds of things that Gateway can provide.
Monitoring systems, so that you can see if something hasn’t been catalogued, like if there is debris that you should worry about. The debris around the moon moves a lot faster because there’s no atmosphere, so there’s a lot more risk that it can put a hole in something.
Things like that, Gateway can do by being that protective shield.
And it will be going around all the time. It’ll live there for 15 years, at least. Imagine a stable platform that provides a place for people to move back and forth from Earth to Gateway, to the moon, back again… It’s your logistics supply, if you need to get more… Again, it’s like an outpost in the days of the stagecoach. The place where you can actually hang out, get your stuff, and then go to your next destination. It’s a great idea. And it’s been fully funded now.
That’s all going to happen in this sequence. Once that does happen, that gets us back to “this time to stay.” Because once all that stuff’s there, you can bring things back and forth without issue. It’ll literally be a whole new world.
Daniel: What do you think are the biggest wins we could have from a successful Artemis program? We’ve talked about Artemis IV and beyond, but as far as our lives, our day-to-day…
John: Yeah. The biggest one is the Jamestown equivalent.
I don’t know if you’ve watched For All Mankind on Apple TV, but it’s pretty good. They call it Jamestown. I think us having a habitation module on the ground there on the moon’s surface and being able to live there 24/7, 365, is a critical thing that can happen in our lifetime.
For sure, we can put Gateway up there. For sure, we can have missions back to the moon. We can start doing more things on what people call “the dark side.” Of course, it’s not really the dark side on the opposite side of the moon because it’s not always dark. But the place that you can’t see, you can put things at Lagrange points to where you can see the backside and the frontside simultaneously. So if there’s a threat coming from another country, you’d be able to see these things and detect it and be safe.
I think a lot of it has to do with putting that infrastructure in place to be able to have that outpost that’s orbiting the moon, and then an outpost on the surface of the moon so that the crew can live, work, and breathe continuously—just like we’ve been doing in a space station for 25 years in a row now. I think that’ll happen in our lifetime.
We can have a permanent presence by 2030 or 2035. And I think we will beat the Chinese at that for sure, assuming the commitment remains. It seems to be—Democrat or Republican—everybody seems to think this is the right thing for us to be doing.
Daniel: Finally, the big question for me is, “What can we, the public, do to help?”
John: Outreach.
I’m surprised by how few people know that there’s four people about to go around the moon. We need people to get re-energized, the way they were energized when the Apollo program started, and especially after Kennedy died. Apollo 11 is the one everybody knew about, and everybody was excited about. That’s something nobody can take away from the United States. We were the first ones to ever set foot on the moon.
I think just outreach, and being able to be a part of it, and… Go see a launch when you get a chance. I highly encourage it. I want to go, too. I haven’t been down to see one in South Texas, even both you and I live in Texas now. Starship 12 is about to launch, and they’re going to be launching a lot.
Going and seeing that stuff excites people, because they start to realize that it’s real—that this whole thing is changing, just like Tesla is changing the way we look at electric cars. For a long time, nobody thought it was going to be stable, but it will, and the space program is here to stay.
I think that’s the biggest thing that people can do, is just read about it, watch it, get excited about it. And if you want to be an astronaut…go for it.
There’s no barrier that keeps anybody from being an astronaut now if you have enough commitment.
That would be my recommendation. Anybody who wants to be that, then go for it.
It will be an economy. It’s something that is going to continue. There’s going to be people living on the moon, in large numbers—much greater than the 12 men that I just said.
You know, so far we haven’t had a single woman on the moon yet, and that needs to be fixed asap. That’s an example.
Daniel: Well, I hope this interview does its part in helping people understand what the next decade is really all about for all of us, everywhere, in every country, every day. And knowing what it’s about, I honestly don’t see how they couldn’t be excited. I’m vibrating in my skin just imagining it.
John: I think people just don’t know about it. It’s just not getting a lot of attention yet. But maybe that’ll change after the flight.
Daniel: I hope so.
John, thank you so much. I’m not exaggerating—this was a childhood dream come true. This was like talking to Gene Krantz during the original Apollo missions. Thank you for giving me this gift. I appreciate your time, your story, and all the things that you felt along the way. Thank you for letting me get to experience that with you.
John: You bet.
Daniel: Ad astra, John.
And godspeed, Artemis II.
The crew of the Artemis II splashed down safely at 8:07 EST, Friday, April 10, 2026.
On March 24, 2026, NASA significantly revamped the Artemis program to focus on faster cadence, increased reusability, and a direct push toward a sustained lunar surface presence.
Artemis III will now be a crewed test mission in low Earth orbit to test docking the Orion capsule with commercial human landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin and validate new spacesuits.
Artemis IV will be the first modern mission to land astronauts on the moon, with the intent of one lunar surface landing per year, eventually increasing to every six months after Artemis V.
The Gateway station development is paused. It will repurpose its existing hardware and partnerships toward immediate, sustained surface operations on the Moon.
The new Moon Base plan is a modular buildout of a lunar base in three phases: robotic missions for power and communication, semi-habitable infrastructure, and eventually a continuous human presence.
