That the Artemis program has a depressing paucity of ambition and that inbuilt into its DNA is several assumptions that are nearly barking mad.

If it all goes perfectly right, and every part of it performs as well as might be hoped, you get about 20 tons to and from the lunar surface, for a total of around some hundred billion dollars.

This works out to around five million dollars a kilo - you're never ever doing serious 'moonbase' type stuff on that sort of launch cost.

• Among some of the baked-in assumptions are that propellant transfer in orbit is impossible, assembly in orbit is impossible, crew transfer in orbit is undesired. (These drive the use of SLS).

Then the selection of the gateway orbit was driven largely by Orion requirements, which is a whole nother pile of fish.

The use of SLS then sets the price expectation for Orion and all hardware that goes near the moon, again ballooning costs.

My hope for the program is that perhaps the translunar flyby flight by SLS goes ahead, at which time Starship is flying, and the new generation of launchers is coming online making a wholesale reconsidering of the program and scrapping most of the legacy elements worthwhile.

Leading to hundred ton payloads landing on the moon for less outlay than the two ton ones.

As context - if SpaceX gets propellant transfer working, with a couple of depots in orbit, and charges for launch the same price /kg as Falcon heavy, you end up with cargo on the moon costing $10K/kg, not $5000K/kg.