THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA, SpaceX Test Starship Lunar Lander Docking System. “For the Artemis III mission, astronauts will ride the Orion spacecraft from Earth to lunar orbit, and then once the two spacecraft are docked, move to the lander, the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) that will bring them to the surface. After surface activities are complete, Starship will return the astronauts to Orion waiting in lunar orbit. During later missions, astronauts will transfer from Orion to Starship via the Gateway lunar space station. Based on SpaceX’s flight-proven Dragon 2 docking system used on missions to the International Space Station, the Starship docking system can be configured to connect the lander to Orion or Gateway.”

It’s all a helluva lot more complex than getting an Apollo command module and LEM to the Moon — but it also allows for getting a helluva lot more mass to the Moon. And that’s how you establish a permanent presence.