SpaceX Teases Interior of Starship HLS, the Moon Ship That Looks More Like a Warehouse

SpaceX just flung the doors open on the Starship HLS lunar lander and the view that greeted us is just stunning. Four astronauts are sitting in a circle of chairs, with their backs to the curved wall, which is as wide as a city bus. The sunlight streaming in is making the metal ribs underfoot look like polished silver. Above them, a massive 30-foot-high dome looms large – big enough to park a house in. With NASA breathing down their neck and demanding the schedule get cut down by months, SpaceX made the decision to rip out the seats, shelves and half the cargo racks.

What we’re left with is a stripped-back , no-frills shell – a vehicle that can take humans to the Moon’s surface before the end of 2028. Get up close to the windows and take a gander. The glass faces the Moon’s south pole – where shadows are a rare sight rising up from the crater bottoms. And let me tell you – from up in orbit those craters look like deep black holes but from in here they’ll feel like they’re right on top of you. During the fall, the astronauts will be facing the other way, riveted on the ground, as they accelerate at a face-melting 2 miles per second.

To get up to the dome, you’ll have to make your way up a narrow ladder that clings to the wall. Without gravity, the space inside the dome is transformed into a sheer vertical drop. One false move and you could be sliding for minutes until the engines kick back in. SpaceX has provided handholds all over the place but the render leaves the walls blank – just to show how big this thing is – much bigger than any crew module that’s ever been flown.


Below the cabin you’ll find two airlocks side by side. Both doors open up into rooms that are bigger than an entire Apollo lander – four people can suit up at the same time, still a bit cramped with knees bumping and helmets clacking. When the outer hatch finally swings open, moonlight pours in, kind of like spilled milk.

Getting out no longer requires a tight squeeze down a ladder. Instead, a construction elevator slowly descends from the vehicle’s belly. The ride down takes only 12 seconds. At the bottom, boots make contact with regolith for the first time since 1972. The cage can carry a tiny rover battery or a 100-pound research container on its next excursion; when it returns, the winch whirs and dust swirls through the exhaust.


The main story, however, is in the fuel math. It all begins with a basic blueprint: 20 tankers transporting a total of 1,200 tons of methane and oxygen, followed by weeks of careful space operations. The revised plan has been significantly pared back, with less than ten launches instead of twenty. Instead of performing a complex orbit that involved looping far out, the lander will rendezvous with Orion in low lunar orbit. That means less distance to go, less fuel evaporation, and less chances for things to go wrong.

Out on the launchpad, the ship looks pretty bare, with no heat shield tiles, flaps or wings to speak of. Under the bright lights, you can see how raw the steel skin is. Six Raptor engines are clustered at the bottom, under a skirt of thrusters that are special for the moon. The fuel tanks are pretty disposable, long and thin, and meant to be jettisoned in space as soon as they’re done. The rocket uses them up and then gets rid of them.



NASA wants to do a final dress rehearsal with an unmanned landing and a trial run in full suits for the ground crew before deploying humans on board. Meanwhile, SpaceX has a major deadline in 2026: proving that they can replenish tanks in orbit without the fuel going bad. One faulty valve or seal might severely disrupt the schedule.
[Source]