[anotherQuarter]

The conops for this doesn’t make sense to me. Not only is it in a weird orbit but after the first lunar landing, which will have two astronauts, the rest will have four. With all 4 crew members on the lunar surface who will be working on gateway? SLS can max launch once a year. Are we really going to give up a lunar landing opportunity for a gateway only mission? Already 1 mission a year for a couple weeks is a big change from a quarter century of continuous operations on ISS. Mix of commercial space stations in LEO supported by regular NASA crews and lunar mission with eventual base seems the most inspiring and beneficial way to keep consistent presence in space was explaining exploration and building private space capability/infrastructure.

[mmooss]

It might be interesting to look up Gateway's mission and see why they are putting it in in orbit around the Moon rather than Earth. I know a major part of it is to learn the lessons needed for a human trip to Mars.

> Not only is it in a weird orbit

Regarding lunar orbits (I don't know about Gateway's orbit):

We are used to relatively stable gravity in Earth orbit, but it is much different out near the Moon: Gravity in cislunar space creates chaotic trajectories due to the three-body problem of Earth, Moon, and the vehicle. Orbits around the Moon are also much less stable than around Earth. There are only a few stable orbits, all below 700 km.

Here's a pretty good resource:

https://www.afrl.af.mil/Portals/90/Documents/RV/A%20Primer%2...

[schiffern]

  >With all 4 crew members on the lunar surface who will be working on gateway?

One of the technology advancements being pushed by Gateway is that (unlike ISS) it wouldn't require a constant human presence.

[rlt]

I assume SLS’s shelf life is limited and we’ll be using Starship end to end within 5 years or so.