>>13006670Starship is designed for all space operations, from LEO station ops to Moon/Mars ops, even deep space exploration ops. The only thing changes, based on space objective (going where), is how much space is allocated for consumables and redundant equipment for the ship for the complement of crew; and the rest for scientific payloads.
The bigger issue for future Artemis missions though is that any other lander big for missions should have at least HALF of Lunarship's capabilities and cost around or less than Lunarship itself, otherwise the public will throw a fit where you have one ship that can put 100T and 25 people on the moon, and another that can put 2T and 4 people on the moon while likely costing more. A monopoly on the market is bad, but paying 2-5x more for 2-5x less is massively worse than a monopoly.
Even if future contracts are awarded, the it will be a PR nightmare when people start asking questions publicly during keynotes and Q&A on why NASA is awarding competitor with multi-billion dollar contracts when they're producing hardware and landers that can deliver 1/50th of what SpaceX can. It's an unavoidable snub at NASA's face and an equal humiliation of any "competitor" bid; basically saying without saying that its a pity award out of legal requirement and not because they're particularly valuable.
Musk's aspiration is to have 1M people on Mars' surface by 2050. To do that SpaceX needs to be able to launch 500-1,000 Starships (Crew and Cargo) in FLEETS of vessels every launch window. So imagine the kind of public outcry you'll see with NASA making $2-10Bn awards for 4-8 people landers when the PRIME contractor is launching anywhere from 5-10,000 people and 5-10 megatons of hardware for maybe 2-3x the total cost of said award.
