Why could it take more than twenty rocket launches to land astronauts on the Moon?

Hook

Why and how could it take more than twenty rocket launches to land astronauts on the Moon? Apollo did it with one. But SpaceX's Starship lander has to be refueled in orbit, again and again, before it can leave. And right now, nobody agrees on how many times.

Rocket

Here's the problem. Rockets are mostly fuel. To lift fuel, you need more fuel, which is heavier, which needs even more fuel. That's the rocket equation, and it's brutal. By the time Starship reaches orbit, it has burned almost all of its propellant. It's in space, but it's running on fumes.

Apollo

Apollo got around this by keeping things small. Its lunar module weighed about fifteen tons, and a giant Saturn V threw everything toward the Moon in one go. Starship's lander is far bigger, closer to a building, so it can carry much more cargo and, eventually, be reused. But all that size needs a lot of fuel.

Plan

So the plan is a gas station in orbit. First, a depot Starship launches and waits. Then tanker Starships launch one after another, dock with it, and pump over the propellant they carried up. Then the lander docks, fills up, and after a final top-off, heads for the Moon.

Hard

That's harder than it sounds. The fuel is liquid methane and liquid oxygen, kept far below freezing. In orbit, sunlight warms the tanks, and some of it boils away. And in zero gravity, liquid doesn't sit at the bottom of a tank. It floats around in blobs, so the ships have to give a gentle push to settle it before pumping. SpaceX has moved super-cold fuel between tanks inside one ship, but no one has ever transferred it between two spacecraft at this scale.

Count

Which brings us to the argument. In October 2026, a member of NASA's safety advisory panel said he thought the latest estimate was around twenty two launches, including reserves and extra fuel lost to boil-off. Elon Musk called that way too high, and said it's more like six to eight. NASA's Artemis program manager said they weren't tracking as high as twenty two, though NASA's administrator called six to eight the long-term goal, not where things start. The longer fuel waits in orbit, the more boils off, and the more tankers you need.

Timeline

Meanwhile, the schedule keeps moving. Artemis II flew astronauts around the Moon in April 2026. The next mission is now a test in Earth orbit, and NASA is aiming for a first landing in 2028 with whichever lander is ready first. SpaceX hopes to try its first ship-to-ship refueling in early 2027. Blue Origin's revised plan skips refueling entirely, using four launches to stack its lander with three extra stages in Earth orbit, but that hardware hasn't flown yet either.

Close

So a Moon landing may take a fleet of rockets, because a bigger lander needs a gas station in space. How many fill-ups it really takes is something only the next test flights can answer. ThatsWhyHow.