SpaceX's HLS Contract: Much of the Money is Gone Already
A closer look at what NASA is spending on Starship
Well, it all sounded good at the time.
On April 16, 2021, NASA announced it had awarded SpaceX a firm-fixed price, milestone-based contract worth $2.89 billion to land two Americans astronauts on the Moon using a Human Landing System (HLS) derived from the company’s Starship booster. An uncrewed demonstration landing on the Moon was set for 2025, with a crewed Artemis III mission that would put astronauts on the lunar surface.
“With this award, NASA and our partners will complete the first crewed demonstration mission to the surface of the Moon in the 21st century as the agency takes a step forward for women’s equality and long-term deep space exploration,” said Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate. “This critical step puts humanity on a path to sustainable lunar exploration and keeps our eyes on missions farther into the solar system, including Mars.”
In November 2022, NASA exercised a contract option worth $1.15 billion that brought the total to just over $4 billion. The space agency said the extra funding would enable SpaceX “to further develop its Starship human landing system to meet agency requirements for long-term human exploration of the Moon under Artemis. With this addition, SpaceX will provide a second crewed landing demonstration mission in 2027 as part of NASA’s Artemis IV mission.”
Well, 2025 has come and mostly gone. The uncrewed demo mission is nowhere in sight. The Artemis III crewed landing has been pushed back to no earlier than 2028. And that schedule might not hold. Meanwhile, development of Starship has lagged. It has been launched 11 times without making a single orbit around Earth.
None of this is unusual; delays are common in developing space vehicles. The rest of the Artemis mission architecture — the Space Launch System, Orion spacecraft, and the lunar Gateway station — has been delayed much longer and cost vastly more than what NASA is spending on SpaceX’s lander.
What about the money? How much NASA funding has been spent on HLS so far? The table above summarizes where the program stood as of Oct. 31. Let’s run through the numbers:
Outlayed Amount ($2.67 billion): what NASA has paid to SpaceX for completed milestones so far. The outlays represent 66.05 percent of the current $4.04 billion contract and 59.67% of the $4.47 billion potential award.
Obligated Amount ($3.01 billion): what NASA has agreed to pay SpaceX for HLS work. The difference between the outlayed and obligated amounts — $349.3 million — represents payments that NASA has yet to make. The obligated amount represents 74.67 percent of the current award and 67.46 percent of the potential award.
Current Award Amount ($4.04 billion): the amount of the HLS contract that NASA gave to SpaceX.
Potential Award Amount ($4.47 billion): an additional $431.9 million that NASA could pay SpaceX for more HLS work if the space agency further modifies the contract. The potential award is 10.66 percent higher than the current award.
NASA’s HLS contract only covers part of the cost of developing Starship and its Super Heavy first-stage booster. Elon Musk’s company has been pouring billions of its own money into the giant rocket, which it plans to use to colonize Mars. Both stages must be fully reusable for that effort to be affordable.
As former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said, the space agency invested in the world’s most powerful launch system instead of a lunar lander. The system comes with a complex mission architecture for getting astronauts to the lunar surface or the Red Planet.
“I want to be clear, we need this rocket [Starship] to be successful, it’s important for the country, and it’s transformational,” Bridenstine said in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee in September. “But, in the meantime, the architecture is such, we need to launch Starship, that first Starship is a fueling depot that is in orbit around the Earth. Then we need to launch, nobody really knows, nobody knows, it could be up to dozens of additional Starships to refuel the first Starship.
“Imagine launching Starship over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, dozens of times, no delays no explosions, to refuel the first Starship. Then once it’s fully refueled, that Starship has to fuel another Starship that is in fact human rated. That process has not even started yet,” he added.
SpaceX has said that it has completed 49 milestones “tied to developing the subsystems, infrastructure, and operations needed to land astronauts on the Moon. SpaceX has started fabricating a flight-article Starship HLS cabin that will include functional avionics and power systems, crew systems and mechanisms, environmental control and life support systems, cabin and crew communications systems, and a cabin thermal control system.”
Much work has been done. Much more work is needed to get American astronauts back to the Moon. The year 2026 will be a pivotal one to determine whether Starship will live up to Elon Musk’s extravagant promises for it.