Elon Musk to NASA’s safety watchdog, Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel: Your number is wrong, that’s way too …

NASA’s safety advisory board Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has reportedly offered a mixed appraisal of the agency’s deep-space ambitions and low Earth orbit (LEO) logistics, drawing swift public pushback from Spacex CEO Elon Musk over the mechanics of reaching the Moon. During its latest assessment, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) cited projections that SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) might require around 22 precursor launches to support a single crewed lunar landing. The staggering launch tempo is driven by orbital refueling requirements, a stark contrast to the 1960s Apollo program, where a single Saturn V lifted an entire mission payload to the Moon using hypergolic-fueled landers.