As part of its Artemis program to return humans to the moon within this decade, NASA has a minimum requirement that its "human landing system" must be able to deliver 865 kilograms to the lunar surface . This is based on the quality of the two crew members and the equipment required for their short stay.
However, in choosing the SpaceX starship vehicle as its human lander, NASA chose a more capable system. In fact, starship will be able to deliver 100 metric tons to the lunar surface, more than 100 times NASA's benchmark target. At the ascendxtexas space conference in Houston last week, SpaceX researchers urged NASA to explore more starship delivery potential. This will be completely different from any capability NASA has previously had. For comparison, the Apollo lunar module spacecraft can carry about 5 tons of cargo to the lunar surface.
Because starship is so ambitious, it is bigger, more powerful and completely reusable than Saturn v. In reality, SpaceX still faces major technical challenges before it is ready to provide an interstellar transportation system suitable for flight. NASA has made a bet on the Starship. With its selection as Artemis's human landing system, this large cutting-edge aircraft is now on the critical path of human landing on the moon, which is NASA's most ambitious human space flight plan in half a century.
There is some evidence that the concept is beginning to gain acceptance in the wider space community. For example, a group of planetary scientists have become enthusiastic about starship's idea of opening a new era of exploration for the solar system. The scientists said that when SpaceX launches its first test mission to Mars, NASA should prepare experimental payloads to take advantage of the mass and volume capabilities of the new aircraft.