NASA is eager to see SpaceX make progress on the orbital refueling plan, seeing it as a potential bottleneck that entails the delicate transfer of thousands of gallons of supercooled, flammable propellants in orbit, three of the people said.
There's a lot of ground covered in this article across multiple contractors, but I think this right here is going to be the defining factor of whether or not NASA can land someone safely on the Moon during what's left of this decade unless someone else cranks out a trustworthy lunar lander, but I feel it'd be back to "flags and footprints" territory, because so much of Artemis depended on SpaceX's BFR, and in hindsight it's astounding that we trusted such a massive undertaking to them using so many unproven and untested techniques.
If SpaceX can't figure out on-orbit refuelling, Artemis likely has to be rethought from the ground-up. This is a devastating blow to a program already on flimsy footing and way over budget.
