SLS was never needed for a moon program. I don't knew where people get this idea. You can use commercial rockets to go to LEO and stage of from there. I don't

SLS was never needed for a moon program. I don't knew where people get this idea. You can use commercial rockets to go to LEO and stage of from there. I don't know why this is hard to understand. NASA knew this in 2011. > I don't think it's a good idea to entirely depend on SpaceX for heavy lift rockets or human rated space flight. They wouldn't have to. You have Crew Dragon and Starliner, both have potentially multiple rockets they could go on. > I also don't understand your point about Orion not being able to go to the moon. The point is that the Orion Service Module developed by ESA is seriously under-powered and NASA has to design around those constraints (and btw its an additional cost of SLS/Orion as this is paid for by NASA not ESA). Orion can't go into LLO and back.