[MisterBiggs]

I should have been more clear, I meant specifically getting Humans to the Moon is looking much more difficult than SpaceX initially believed. In orbit refueling will require incredible vehicle performance, launch cadence and vehicle manufacturing. All things SpaceX can surely achieve in time. I speculate that in 2017 when the dearMoon deal was struck Elon had a much different ConOps in mind for this mission.

[mlindner]

Ah ok. However I do think they assumed in-orbit refueling for the DearMoon mission. Starship was designed from the get go to only barely make LEO with a very large payload (or go a bit further with a smaller payload) and then anything higher energy would require refueling the vehicle.