NASA is now treating Artemis III as a late-2027 target at the earliest, with SpaceX and Blue Origin saying their lunar landers should be ready around then too.
That is clean
“Put it in pencil” is the most honest part of this. Once you slip past a presidential election cycle, the schedule turns into a funding and narrative problem as much as an engineering one.
“Put it in pencil” hit me too — once it’s “late 2027, ” how are they planning to keep requirements and funding stable across an election cycle without the whole thing turning into milestone theater? I could be wrong here.
Yeah “late 2027” feels like a date chosen for optics more than planning. even with good engineering, the incentives shift every budget season, so the team ends up optimizing for slide-deck milestones instead of flight-ready hardware.
