Blue Origin CEO: there's no commercial reason to send humans to moon

Back in May of 2021, I thought I could see a case emerging to say it was time for NASA to start getting out of the "how" side of getting to the places they're interested in and moving over to figuring out the "what we do once we're there" side.  Just one year earlier, the "Bob and Doug" or Demo-1 mission on May 30, 2020 was a potent demonstration that the idea of hiring private sector companies to deliver crews as well as cargo to the ISS and all sorts of mission hardware around the solar system was the future.  

This weekend's edition of Ars Technica's site includes an in-depth discussion with Blue Origin's CEO, Dave Limp by Stephen Clark, ARS' newest space writer.  In it, Limp comes across as strongly on that side in the discussions.  

I knew very little about CEO Limp before this and honestly that's still not a lot knowledge, but I'd be a lot more comfortable sitting around and talking with him.  By contrast I've seen enough interviews and talks with Elon Musk that I feel like I've worked with him or dozens of high level engineers that seem to have the same personality.  I almost feel as if I know him. 

The first part of the article is largely about Limp and how he got where he is.  Perhaps the most important quote in that section is:

While he's still a relative newcomer to the space business, Limp's views align with those of many policy wonks and industry leaders who have the ears of senior officials in the Trump administration, including Jared Isaacman, President Trump's nominee to become the next NASA administrator.  

In remarks Thursday at the Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit, Limp advocated for the exact same thing as I did in that May '21 post: that NASA should hire companies from the private space industry to design and implement the transportation and infrastructure portions of the missions NASA wants to do.  

The problem, of course is getting congress to let go of their billion dollar babies. 

However, NASA, with the backing of key congressional leaders, has held an iron grip on having its own heavy-lift launcher and crew capsule to ferry astronauts between Earth and destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Now, these vehicles—the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft—may be canceled if Congress agrees with Trump's proposed NASA budget.

Commercial rockets close to matching or exceeding the Space Launch System's lift capability are available for purchase or likely will be soon. These include SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket and Blue Origin's New Glenn launcher. Both are already key elements of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to land US astronauts on the Moon as a stepping stone toward human expeditions to Mars.

Do we need to address how expensive SLS/Orion is again?  Over $4.4 billion for ONE mission while one Falcon Heavy launch costs $178 million.  SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can only lift about 2/3 of the payload of the SLS so two Falcon Heavy launches at $356 million are required to put as much mass into orbit as one SLS.  That's still a whopping 8 % of the cost of the SLS launch.  

A sad and alarming truth is that many of us are saying to let commercial space address these manned missions but Clark writes:

NASA's robotic science probes are also getting more expensive, even when accounting for inflation. Given the way NASA procures science probes, it would cost NASA more today to send an orbiter to Mars than it did for a similarly sized spacecraft a quarter-century ago.

This has to change in order for NASA and private companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX to make their ambitions a reality, Limp said Thursday.

Limp went on to say things with a realism you don't often hear from space industry executives. While there's a growing list of commercially viable markets in space that are natural places for the private sector (things like Starlink and Kuiper internet services, space debris removal wouldn't have been included 20 years ago), the market for human spaceflight still requires some level of government commitment.

"I think the thing about bringing commercial aspects to exploration, to science, to the Moon, to Mars, is that we have to see a business prospect for it," Limp said. "We have to turn it into a business, and that benefits American taxpayers because we will use that capital as efficiently as we can to get to the Moon, to get to Mars in a safe way, but in a way that's the most efficient.

"We're committed to that, no matter what the architecture looks like, but it does take the US government and international governments to have the motivation to do it," he continued. "There's not yet a commercial reason only to go to the Moon with humans. There are lots of commercial reasons to put robotics on the Moon and other types of things. So, we do need to have conviction that the Moon is important and Mars is important as well."

The giant of the industry is Starship, of course, which isn't operational yet.  Blue's New Glenn has had one mission, back in January of this year and it was a two stage version - there's a three stage version that hasn't flown.  Starship is rated for payloads to orbit two to three times the mass that New Glenn can handle: that's 100 to 150 tons to LEO compared to 45 tons to LEO.  While New Glenn has only had one mission to successfully achieve orbit, the next mission is planned to be "later this year," and will be the first test of their version of the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module, which they call their MK1.

The MK2 lunar lander depicted here will carry a larger payload but will require refueling to land (and leave!) the moon's surface. 

The quote that there's no commercial reason to send humans to the moon ties to the non-manned missions to the moon most directly.  The suggested NASA budget proposes slashing NASA's space science budget by nearly $2.3 billion, Earth science by almost $1.2 billion, and space technology by $531 million.

While Limp didn't directly address these budget proposals, these parts of NASA are largely focused on research projects that lack a commercial business case. Who else but a government space agency, or perhaps an especially generous type of philanthropic multi-billionaire, would pay to send a probe to study Jupiter's icy moon Europa? Or a robot to zip by Pluto? Or how about a mission like Landsat, which documents everything from water resources to farms and urban sprawl and makes its data freely available to anyone with an Internet connection?  

Most experts agree there are better ways to do these things. Reusable rockets, mass-produced satellite platforms, and improved contracting practices can bring down the costs of these missions. Bezos' long-term goal for Blue Origin, which is to move all polluting factories off the Earth and into space, will be easier to achieve with government support, not just funding, Limp said.

“Getting up there, building factories on the Moon is a great step, and the government can really help with research dollars around that," he said. "But it still does need the labs. The science missions need the JPLs [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] of the world. To make the human experience right, we need the Johnson Space Centers of the world to be able to kind of use that gold mine of institutional knowledge.

David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, speaks during the 2025 Humans to the Moon and Mars Summit at George Washington University in Washington, DC, on May 29, 2025. Credit: Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images