Rockets Curve Into Orbit to Save Fuel, Tapping Earth’s 1,037-mph Spin

Q: After Artemis II's success, what is the biggest hurdle facing NASA in the race against China to build a moon base?

The biggest hurdle is no longer getting Orion and SLS around the Moon; it is getting astronauts safely down to the lunar surface and keeping the landing architecture on schedule. Artemis II showed that NASA’s core deep-space transport system can work on a crewed lunar mission. But the bottleneck now is the Human Landing System, especially SpaceX’s Starship-based lunar lander and the in-orbit refueling it requires. That refueling chain has not yet been demonstrated at the scale needed for a crewed Moon landing, and experts have described the lander as the most difficult part of the Artemis architecture and the part least under NASA’s direct control. That matters because a moon base cannot begin without a reliable way to land crews and cargo repeatedly. Delays have already pushed the landing timeline to the right, while China is advancing its own lunar plans with a clearer focus on surface operations and infrastructure for the 2030s. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon system, meant to support later Artemis missions, also faces uncertainty after damage to key launch infrastructure. Even if the landers are solved, NASA still faces hard follow-on challenges in making a base sustainable: lunar dust that damages equipment, extreme temperature swings during the lunar night, spacesuit readiness, power systems, and long-term funding stability. But in the immediate race with China, the decisive hurdle is the readiness and reliability of the lunar landing systems.

2 articles · Updated · Jalopnik · Jun 10

Orbital rockets bend into a sideways “banana” path because a Gravity turn is the most fuel-efficient way to reach a stable orbit, improving payload-to-fuel ratios.
That curve lets gravity add acceleration while the rocket builds downrange speed, so it can keep falling around Earth instead of shooting straight up and dropping back.
Eastward launches gain an extra boost from Earth’s rotation—about 1,037 mph at the equator—while turning another way means burning more fuel to overcome that inertia.
Launch sites such as Cape Canaveral, Starbase and China’s Xichang are favored partly because their lower latitudes maximize that rotational assist for orbital missions.