The article says that the SpaceX submission is for Starship.

I think that’s doable in 4.5 years. They expect to fly and land an unmanned prototype upper stage this year. A manned upper stage up to 4 years later doesn’t seem unreasonable. They reckon the upper stage is that hardest part, the first stage should be much simpler.

A lot depends on the ability to refuel in orbit. To do that they’ll need multiple starships flying, and to have worked out the kinks in orbital refuelling. It might sound trivial, but it’s never been done before.

There is a reason SpaceX is not just designing one 'bespoke' rocket. Elon has said over and over again that the real challenge is producing these in large numbers and cheaply.

They will actually have to prove out refueling pretty soon under the NASA contract.

And SpaceX bid also includes flying the system many times until 2024.

So SpaceX will have to do a lot of flights and demonstrate all this stuff to have a shot at this. So it is good that they are going right into mass production that is the only way they can prove all these different things until 2024.

>* the SLS is what will be used to launch the Artemis missions*

That seems overly optimistic for a system that is now a year and a half past it's original target launch date and has a current target date of late next year.

The original launch for SLS was supposed to be 2016. But I agree, the dependency on SLS is not great.

I expect there will be more than one launch system and more than one moon landing system, provided by private companies.

Seems to work great for satellite launch and ISS supply mission. Why not for moon transport?