Quick. Name the Apollo missions that actually mattered.
You probably thought of Apollo 11 first. Obviously. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, the small step, the giant leap. Maybe you thought of Apollo 13 because Tom Hanks starred in a movie about its near-disaster. If you are a real space nerd, you might even think of Apollo 8, the first time humans wrapped around the moon on Christmas Eve. For a closer look into similar topics, we suggest: this related article.
But almost nobody talks about Apollo 9.
It launched in March 1969. It stayed entirely in low Earth orbit. It didn't take any iconic photos of a blue marble hanging over the lunar wasteland. Yet, without it, the moon landing would have been impossible. For additional information on the matter, comprehensive reporting can be read at The Next Web.
Right now, NASA is preparing for Artemis III. This is the big one. It is the mission designed to put boots back on the moon for the first time in over half a century. People are already drawing lines between Artemis III and Apollo 11. But if you want to understand the real engineering risks, the logistical headaches, and the sheer audacity of what NASA is trying to pull off, you need to stop looking at Apollo 11.
You need to look at Apollo 9.
The Forgotten Masterclass in Lunar Infrastructure
Apollo 9 was boring on purpose. That is why history forgot it.
The mission kept astronauts Jim McDivitt, David Scott, and Rusty Schweickart trapped in Earth orbit for ten days. They didn't go to the moon. They didn't even try. Instead, their job was to test a weird, gangly, insect-looking spacecraft that had never flown with humans inside before: the Lunar Module.
Before Apollo 9, the lunar lander was a theoretical concept. Engineers at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation built it, but nobody knew if it could actually function in the vacuum of space while docked to the Command Module. Even worse, nobody knew if it could separate, fly on its own, and come back.
Think about the psychological toll of that test. McDivitt and Schweickart climbed into the lander, undocked from Scott in the command ship, and flew over a hundred miles away. The lander had no heat shield. If its engine failed to fire, or if it couldn't rendezvous back with the main ship, the astronauts were dead. They would have burned up in Earth's atmosphere or drifted until their oxygen ran out.
They ran the tests. They fired the engines. They docked successfully. It was a flawless execution of orbital mechanics that proved the hardware worked.
Apollo 9 took the ultimate risk in a safe sandbox. It proved the infrastructure before committing to the deep space destination.
Artemis III is Scaling the Same Mountain
Fast forward to the current era. NASA is aiming to land the first woman and the next man on the lunar surface with Artemis III.
The mainstream media loves focusing on the destination. They talk about the south pole of the moon. They talk about finding water ice in permanently shadowed craters. But they skip the messy, terrifying infrastructure part. Just like Apollo 9, Artemis III relies on a completely unproven landing system that has to do a terrifying dance in space before anyone touches the dirt.
Only this time, the dance is much more complicated.
During Apollo, the Saturn V rocket launched everything at once. The Command Module and the Lunar Module rode to the moon together. It was a tight, self-contained package.
Artemis doesn't work that way. The Space Launch System rocket is powerful, but it cannot carry the crew and the lander simultaneously. NASA chose SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System for the job. Starship is massive. It is so big that it cannot launch directly to the moon with fuel to spare.
To make Artemis III work, SpaceX has to launch a propellant depot into Earth orbit. Then, they have to launch a fleet of automated tanker ships—honestly, estimates range from eight to close to twenty launches—just to fill that single depot with liquid oxygen and methane.
Once the depot is full, the massive Starship lander launches empty, fills up its tanks at the orbital gas station, and then flies to the moon alone. Only then does NASA launch the Orion spacecraft with the actual crew. They meet up in lunar orbit, dock, and transfer astronauts to the lander.
It makes the Apollo 9 rendezvous look like child's play.
The Massive Stakes of the New Lunar Dance
If you think this sounds like a logistical nightmare, you are right. It is a massive bet on distributed launch infrastructure.
Many space policy experts and engineers have expressed serious doubts about this architecture. The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly flagged the sheer number of launches required as a major schedule risk. Cryogenic fuel transfer in zero gravity is something humanity has never done at this scale. Liquid methane and oxygen like to boil off and disappear into space if they sit too long.
If SpaceX cannot figure out how to park a tanker in orbit without losing fuel, the entire mission crumbles.
This is exactly why the spiritual ghost of Apollo 9 hangs over the space coast today. Before Artemis III can touch down, SpaceX and NASA have to execute their own version of Apollo 9. They need to prove the orbital refueling works. They need to prove that Starship can manage its cryogenics over weeks in space. They need to show that uncrewed dockings and automated fuel transfers are reliable.
The common mistake is assuming that going to the moon in 2026 or 2027 should be easier because we have better computers than we did in 1969. Your smartphone has more computing power than the entire Apollo program combined. That is a fun trivia fact, but physics does not care about your iPhone.
Plumbing is still plumbing. Rockets are still giant controlled explosions. Moving tons of super-chilled liquid from one spaceship to another while traveling 17,500 miles per hour is a brutal engineering challenge.
What to Watch For Next
The path to the moon isn't a straight line. If you want to know whether Artemis III will succeed, stop looking at the calendar and start looking at the testing milestones.
Forget the PR hype. Watch the uncrewed flight tests. Watch the orbital refueling demonstrations that SpaceX plans to conduct in low Earth orbit. That is where the real mission lives.
If those fuel transfers fail, or if the automated docking systems glitch, the timeline slips. If they succeed, we are witnessing the birth of a permanent space economy.
Keep your eyes on the orbital tests. When you see two Starship vehicles link up in orbit to trade fuel, remember Jim McDivitt and Rusty Schweickart drifting away in their fragile lunar bug fifty-seven years ago. The scale is bigger, the ships are shinier, but the high-stakes game of orbital mechanics never changes.
