Congress just greenlit a NASA moon plan opposed by Musk and Isaacman

The U.S. Senate has approved a $10 billion increase in funding for NASA’s Artemis program as part of President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, supporting legacy aerospace contractors and the continuation of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the lunar Gateway station. This decision counters critics like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who have questioned the sustainability and cost-effectiveness of the SLS, a fully expendable rocket with production costs estimated around $2.5 billion per launch. Musk has criticized the SLS for its one-time-use design, contrasting it with SpaceX’s reusable rockets, while Isaacman acknowledged the SLS’s role in upcoming Artemis missions but doubted its viability for frequent lunar and Mars travel. Despite President Trump’s earlier proposal to phase out the SLS and Orion spacecraft after Artemis III, the new funding allocates approximately $4.1 billion for additional SLS rockets for Artemis missions 4 and 5, and $2.6 billion to complete the