The whole moon thing is a pointless and ludicrously expensive dead end. But if one wants to do it, one should choose between the working approaches.
The whole moon thing is a pointless and ludicrously expensive dead end. But if one wants to do it, one should choose between the working approaches.
Orion is actually pointless, I don't understand why the mission goals are valuable. Partial success would be meaningless. Success is meaningless.
Starship in contrast has a variety of meaningful objectives. Even if Starship only achieves proving that cryogenic fuel transfer in LEO is possible that's a valuable mission goal in and of itself.
If you really think "the whole moon thing is pointless" NASA is pointless.
NASA does not seem to be constituted to be able to engage in a coherent manned space program of actual value. It's a long standing systemic issue.
They are great at pretending to deliver value, but there's no "there" there.