NASA’s Next Moon Shot

The Artemis II mission to the Moon has captured a lot of pent-up excitement among Americans excited to see NASA return to its roots to do something like its stuff of legend. But one thing we’ve already learned is that NASA’s approach to building the Artemis rocket system has no future.

That’s because much of the Artemis rocket was literally “Frankensteined” together using surplus Space Shuttle parts. It’s a real technical achievement, thanks largely to the abilities of engineers and technicians who managed to make it work.

It’s also a case study in the sunk cost fallacy, thinking of politicians. They looked at the enormous waste of obsolete equipment left over from the dead shuttle program and thought we can’t spend that much money and have all of it go to waste after having spent so much on them. Not when they could grease the wheels with aerospace and defense companies in their districts, who would be awarded with pieces of the political project with very little competition and very little new technological development.

To understand why that’s a bad thing, consider what defense company Palantir’s Chief Financial Officer Shyam Sankar said in 2024 about how the U.S. government established its missile programs back in the 1950s and 1960s:

Palantir CTO @ssankar in 2024:

“For $10 billion, @elonmusk put 300 rockets in orbit.”

“For $11 billion the state of California has built 1600ft of elevated rail, with no rail.” https://t.co/1UcpANmzSR pic.twitter.com/0c0OhA2tfL

— Jawwwn (@jawwwn_) March 25, 2026

Here’s an AI-generated summary of his comments:

Palantir’s CTO Shyam Sankar highlighted the contrast in a video: SpaceX achieved over 300 orbital launches with about $10 billion, compared to California’s high-speed rail project, which spent around $11 billion by 2024 for 1,600 feet of the Fresno River Viaduct and no track laid. Voters approved the project in 2008 with a $10 billion bond, but by early 2026, spending topped $15 billion on 119 miles under construction, with full costs now estimated over $230 billion. SpaceX’s funding included $12 billion in equity and NASA contracts, enabling reusable rockets, while rail faces lawsuits, environmental reviews, and delays—fueling ongoing talks about private efficiency versus public infrastructure challenges.

It’s no accident Sankar is pointing to California’s high-speed rail system as an example of government failure. Even 60 Minutes is finally calling it out as the boondoggle it has always been:

An ambitious state-run high-speed rail project linking Los Angeles and San Francisco hasn’t stayed on track. 60 Minutes reports on the costly struggle to bring high-speed rail to the United States, Sunday. https://t.co/mEN4CWeXMW pic.twitter.com/mcEoxZ8qEW

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 2, 2026

That brings me to my next point. Just ahead of when NASA launched its Artemis II mission, the space agency announced it would take on a new mission to build a base on the Moon. It has an initial price tag of $20 billion over seven years and will incorporate modern launch technologies that have already massively reduced the cost of going into space.

That sets up a competition. Which do you suppose will get built first? Will it be NASA’s proposed build-from-scratch lunar base, or will it be California’s 16-year-old construction project to build a bullet train that travels between Bakersfield and Merced? And which do you suppose will cost less when it’s finished?