Science

I will eat my left nut if they actually accomplish this. The US is completely incapable of doing exploratory science anymore. There is no oil or LNG on the moon and there's nobody to genocide so the US will never accomplish anything on the moon

The Lunar Gateway station was only planned for the Artemis moon mission program because the latest-and-greatest NASA rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) is too underpowered to send the excessively-heavy Orion crew vehicle to lunar orbit. So NASA planners had to come up with a way to send the crew vehicle "halfway" there. Gateway was to be a small space station in a kinda-sorta-lunar-ish-orbit (technically something called a halo orbit, long story) that's basically just living space and docking ports and various support systems. The plan was for crew to launch from Earth in an Orion capsule on top of an SLS rocket, dock at Gateway, transfer to a lander, and then go to the moon's surface. Reverse to process to get home again.

SLS is basically a bunch of legacy 1970s space shuttle tech that's been lego'd together to make a "new" rocket. And it was done that way because the US senate, holder of NASA's pursestrings, needed to keep that old defence industry partners who built space shuttle tech well-funded without having to have them reduce profits by actually spending on new R&D. And yes, this includes using solid-fuel boosters of the exact same design that killed the Challenger crew. It is literally an actual US law that NASA must build SLS.

Now here's the "why is this important?" part of the story. The short version is that Gateway needs SLS, and SLS needs Gateway. Remove either from the plans, and the rationale for the existence of the other also goes away. This could be the first step in finally killing that ridiculous, dangerous, and wasteful pork project called SLS once and for all.

Expect a massive bilateral effort by congresspeople and senators to keep Gateway, at the behest of their paymasters in the MIC. SLS cannot be cancelled by NASA. It's a law that they must build it. So there will be a political fight to get rid of it.

They're not gonna achieve a moon base, but they are probably gonna kill some more astronauts

Garcia-Galan explained that the lunar base would be established through three phases, using a mix of providers primarily through a scaled up Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. Each of these three phases would cost on the order of $10 billion. The first of these, running through 2028, is estimated to comprise 21 landings, putting a total of 4 metric tons of payload on the Moon, including the VIPER rover to prospect for lunar resources; four “Moon Fall” drones that can travel up to 50 km and reach areas difficult for humans to access; initial versions of a lunar terrain vehicle capable of surviving up to 150 hours without sunlight; and radioisotope heater units. During this phase NASA will also seek to establish two lunar orbital communications satellite constellations. As part of phase two, running from 2029 to 2032, NASA will seek to secure a site for a lunar base. This phase is projected to entail 27 landings with a total mass of 60 metric tons. These landed payloads would include larger, pressurized rovers, solar and nuclear power sources for surface activities, towers for communication, and excavator rovers.

NASA runs on an eternal cycle of projects constructed from the canniballised remains of the previous uncompleted projects that allows them to keep the process going just a little longer until they can finally say "Well we've actually built the thing now, so we HAVE to use it for SOMETHING". Gateway was the lifeboat for several projects from the 2000s. PPE for example was saved from the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and now, like that one sea turtle that makes it to the ocean, its now going to be slapped on a mars mission. Of course, even being fully built and tested doesn't always save you, if you're like the poor guys on the DRACO team and your project doesn't have dual-use capablilities then you can be months away from launch and still get scrapped.

I stand by my current prediction that NASA will perform a few human landings between 2028-2030 before leaving the moon and never returning as the American Empire crumbles.

Trump should force NASA to put two new flags on the moon. The American flag and a TRUMP flag.