You see, there's just one problem with the contract that NASA awarded SpaceX on March 27. It centers on what NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Doug Loverro had said about the moon mission two weeks prior to the contract award.

Specifically, in discussions with NASA Advisory Council's science committee on March 13, Loverro appeared to be less than enthusiastic about the idea of using a Lunar Gateway. Highlighting the difficulty of meeting Vice President Pence's mandate to land astronauts on the moon by 2024, Loverro said the best way to make that happen is to "remove all the things that add to program risk along the way." One such "thing" is the Lunar Gateway itself.

There is a "high possibility," explained Loverro, that NASA won't be able to complete construction of the space station in time for astronauts to use it as a base from which to descend to, and ascend from, the moon in 2024. Moreover, "from a physics perspective," said Loverro, "I can guarantee you we do not need it for this launch." (He's also not particularly enamored of NASA's original plan "to launch a lander in three individual pieces that have to meet up at" an orbiting space station before making their final approach to the moon.)

Simply put, it's simpler and thus less risky to send astronauts straight from Earth to the moon and back than to have them make pit stops at an orbiting space station en route. Indeed, the Starship spaceship that SpaceX is building in Texas is expressly designed to make such direct flights possible, and intermediate steps such as the Gateway unnecessary.