[Teever]

> It's physically not possible at our current level of technology to make this "safer" due to the distances and energies involved.

That's not true at all.

It is entirely within current technical and fiscal means to launch a much more robust and powerful craft that is capable of goign to the moon and returning with lower velocity by sending it up in pieces with Falcon 9 (Heavy) and assembling it in LEO before launching to the moon.

This mission architecture is intrinsically compromised by social constraints in the form of pork barrel spending dsfunctional decision making process.

[imtringued]

Given current levels of technology, this would require docking with a series of space tugs. Not impossible, but Blue Origin is the only organisation working on this at a meaningful scale.

There was also Nautilus-X which never made it beyond the concept stage.

[Teever]

Mir and the ISS were built this way and the Space shuttle, Dragon, and Soyuz have/had no problem docking with the ISS.

If you feel constrained by the size of the Falcon Heavy fairing the now defunct Bigelow Aerospace launched several prototype inflatable habitats that apparently tested well in LEO.

Combine this with a lunar cycler[0] orbit and you could keep reusing the same craft over and over and expanding to it if you want to ferry the astronauts to the moon.

You'll note that everything I'm describing requires existing technology and very proven techniques (except maybe the inflatable stuff) but the thing it doesn't require is a giant rocket like SLS or Starship. I'm not saying that we shouldn't build machines like that, it's just that they really aren't needed for a mission like this and I question why something like SLS was built in the first place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_cycler

[NetMageSCW]

It is very reasonable to question why SLS was built - during much of its history there was no reason or destination and the destinations that were used changed periodically.

OTOH, Statship has a very good rationale for existing - it is required to be the size it is to support full reuse with reasonable cargo to orbit and lower the cost of launch another ten times.