I lack info on it, but I assumed it was supposed to work with a moon based fuek production facility or something like thay

Eventually fuel won’t be supplied to the gateway by earth. The goal is for it to be manufactured on the moon.

I believe it’s not just a staging point for lunar missions, but missions to mars and beyond as well.

Its also introduces the possibility to break flight teams up into several smaller landing parties for missions and whatnot.

Because the plan is not to just go to the Moon and back, but spend as much time there as possible. That may not always require going to the surface. It's also a lot easier to launch multiple landing missions from the gateway than from Earth since you can use it to pre-stage resources needed for landing.

I'm too lazy to look it up now, but the Lunar Gateway mission has been convered by many people on YouTube, so just look it up, and they'll explain it much better.

Well, we first need to chill out and see how things progress. Right now, LG is nothing more than a touted World Wonder of modern age, but nothing more.

At the time of its construction, ISS was supposed to be a hub for further space explorations, where Shuttles would bring in components for Mars missions that would refuel the ISS before heading off to the Red Planet and stuff like that. Now, it barely serves 10% of the purposes originally touted.

But to explain a bit more the plan for LG.

LG is part of a whole system of lunar transportation. Unlike current and previous means of reaching the Moon, which meant the need to have a spacecraft going back and forth from Earth to Moon, LG project envisions LG as a node in a transport network, where supply ships will create a stockpile of materials on the space station and then there will be another fleet of space ships dedicated to going from LG to the Moon and Back. In theory, this is a bit more efficient than simply repeating the Moonshots because you can jampack a lot of unmanned rockets with supplies for LG and send them back to Earth, optimizing fuel consumption. Bleeding delta-V is not a problem as big as you make it to be. If you want to land something on the Moon, you would still need to bleed a huge portion of your fuel reserve in order to reduce your relative speed. Instead of bleeding it fully to land on the moon, you bleed it partially to dock with the space station. And then you bleed it again using a different space craft optimized for landing. Again, the efficiency bonus comes from the fact that you can send in lots of large supply ships to the space stations which you do not need to worry about getting off the Moon (which would require extra equipment and more fuel). The landings would be done by more simpler space craft, with streamlined equipment, which would lack stuff like thermal shielding for getting back to Earth (which would reduce their mass and fuel consumption)

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The dummies included on Artemis-1 (Moonikin Campos, Helga, and Zohar) won’t be going to Gsteway. As far as I know Lunar Gateway will be for humans only.

The Lunar Gateway would be a way-station, a place to hold supplies for continual missions, much like gas stations on the highway allow us to travel farther than one tank of gas.

11.2 KM/S delta-V to escape Earth's gravity

2.38 KM/S delta-V to escape Moon's gravity

The space craft have to do 20% the work to bring material up from industrial processing sites on the moon. Every extra kilogram of weight requires more engine fuel to generate that 11.2 KM/S just to get off earth. By shifting the construction effort to the Moon we are able to greatly reduce fuel costs to get off Earth. With a Lunar Gateway our off-Earth shipping weight would be reduced to that of people and basic living necessities. Instead of trying to ship up heavy items like steel girders, concrete, and the like.

Currently only 4% of the Falcon 9's weight is the actual payload to Low-Earth Orbit. That's 549,054 kg to get 22,800 kg off the ground and to an ISS equivalent location.

If the Lunar Gateway was the material size/weight equivalent to the Burj Khalifa, then it would weigh approx 500,000,000 kg (500,000 tonnes). To build that structure with Earth materials in Low-Earth Orbit, it would require approx 21,930 individual launches from Earth... not including the manning, equipment, and living supplies needed by the construction team.

Tldr: building in space with material from the Moon is a lot cheaper and allows for bigger spacecraft to be built.

https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/stem-in-context/escape-velocity

https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/rockth.html

https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/falcon-9/

Others have given great answers. I'll add just a little more. There's a concept of cislunar space, cislunar infrastructure and a cislunar economy - cislunar just means the space between the Earth and the Moon. LG is one component piece of a future cislunar infrastructure that facilitates lunar satellites, transport to and from the surface, rapid escape in the case of catastrophe on the surface, and it's all local to the Moon. It's, at least on paper, an efficient way to do Moon missions and the starting point for mining ice to turn into rocket fuel to send us on along to Mars. Long term, LG replaces some of the existing Earth-based space infrastructure.

There is also a geopolitical aspect to this, as China is firmly set on going to the Moon and building stuff there. So if China sets up a Moon telescope peering back at Earth or if China starts mining helium-3 and corners the market, or whatever, the competing powers want to be able to do the same thing. And LG and cislunar infrastructure are important parts of showing Moon capabilities and answering China's accomplishments as they occur.

It also gives a location to test how humans fair from a longer period of time above the van allen belts given the ISS is protected from much of the radiation of deep space and going to mars will need people to survive radiation for much longer than the week previously tried.

The point of the LG is to give something for SLS to do.

SLS isn't capable of sending all-up Apollo-style lunar mission with a crew module and a lander. So the lander needs to be sent separately. Therefore you need somewhere for the lander to dock, and since it's reusable, to refuel. Therefore, a Lunar Gateway.

If NASA had decided to build a rocket around a mission, instead of figuring out a mission to fit the rocket, then none of this would have been necessary.

>I believe it’s not just a staging point for lunar missions, but missions to mars and beyond as well.

That doesn't make much sense. If you are going from LEO to Mars, then going to the Moon is a detour that you don't need.

If SpaceX manages to handle orbital refueling the way they need to to get to the Moon, then there is no point in refueling at the Lunar Gateway to go to Mars.

To obtain moon-sourced fuel.

I support this answer.

It's "purpose" was to give the SLS a reason to exist.

Which is more expensive, risky and complex than just sourcing from Earth

Unfortunately the whole “industrial scale creation of fuel and materials” on the moon is a fantasy. Not that it is impossible, but that it isn’t being developed now. We need have at-scale test articles begin developed today. We need to see a solar powered electrolysis plant in operation today that can generate fuel in the same way it will be done on the moon. Lab experiments don’t cut it, engineering needs to be done. If NASA were serious about it they would be building this infrastructure right now. I think that the current funding scheme limits the agency’s ability to confidently invest beyond just the minimal next step to get to the moon.

Yes, I quite agree; by all estimates industrial scale resource creation on the moon is centuries in the future.

Judging from the press releases, the station will support experiments as well as pre-positioning exploration supplies. Does it make sense,? Dunno. Isn't that part of the plan for Mars? Sending supplies ahead?

The Lunar Gateway allows NASA to break up missions to the Moon into two steps, with reusable hardware and long-term infrastructure. You fly to and from the Gateway with a reusable capsule like Orion (or maybe a deep-space version of Crew Dragon).

Then a reusable lunar lander ferries to and from Gateway to the lunar surface, eventually to a lunar base.

Only if you've invented a space elevator.

It takes 8 pounds of rocket fuel to get 1 pound of payload into LEO. Cutting gravity by 5/6ths has the potential for exponentially smaller fuel costs.

Is there any chance the ISS is used in more of the planned operations in the future?

That's entirely ignoring the cost and difficulty of setting up, running and maintaining a large industry on the moon. Even your base premise is wrong, the most expensive part of a rocket isn't the fuel, it's the rocket itself, that's why reusable rockets are the trend now.

Let's illustrate how unnecessary it is to refuel on the moon, then go to another place like for example, Mars.

It takes similar amount of fuel to go to Mars compared to the moon. What you are suggesting is that instead of launching and refueling from Earth, then head to Mars, we should:

1. Launch all the machines and equipments needed for a mining and refinery facility on the moon.

2. Assemble, run and maintain said facility with materials from Earth, because the moon doesn't have all resources needed to be self sustaining.

3. Launch a rocket all the way to the moon, land, refuel and take off again towards destination, in this case Mars.

There's all disadvantages and no advantage to what you suggested, it's like taking a massive detour to build a new gas station in the middle of nowhere just so you can continue on a trip, instead of going to the gas station nearest to you. I simply cannot see the value in setting up moon as a gas station of space, not with current and near future technology.

That cannot be it, since Artemis 3 is done entirely without gateway

Lower escape velocity is not the same as cheaper. Is steel on the moon the same price as steel on Earth? Is fuel on the moon the same price as fuel on Earth? If resources on the moon are more expensive than resources on the Earth, it might be cheaper to launch from Earth. If your main goal is cheaper, then we should wait until we have cheap resources on the moon before working on LG.

It is possible to mine things on the moon, build things on the moon and leave those things on the moon. I'm not sure what the Lunar Gateway gets you. Supplies can be sent to the moon on one-way spaceships. People flying to the moon will be in a hurry. If docking slows them down, that could be a problem, because that means more radiation and more life-support resources.

Launched in 1998, and expected to be de-orbited in 2031. If it hasn't happened yet, it's unlikely to, given it is in the last trimester of its existence. Could it be booted up for one last hurrah? Sure, but generally a project like the ISS would be front-loaded for functionality so that the remaining service period could provide a maximum return on investment. At this point, any enhancements beyond maintenance would likely be viewed as a loss.

Then again, I'm not an expert, or even that much of a hobbyist. I'm just a guy who looked up some dates on Google.

What about Europa Clipper and Dragonfly? Are they launching on SLS?

Mars has a thin atmosphere. Would that also not mean a small amount of protection? (More than Lunar orbit)

Was more thinking about the transit. In mars the suggestions seem to be covering bases in regolith due to the minimal protection from the very thin atmosphere.

Note earths protection comes from a combination of atmosphere and magnetic field.

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SpaceX operations, including NASA HLS, rely on orbital refueling from Starship tankers.

Once that is up and running, there isn't much advantage in producing rocket fuel on the Moon.

Those "reusable rockets" have to be so large and complex because they contain ridiculous amounts of fuel.

It takes "a similar amount of fuel" getting to the moon as getting to Mars because in both cases, you burn the overwhelming majority of your fuel just getting out of Earth's gravity well.

Its cheaper to manufacture space based structures and needs in space/on low gravity enviroments, because its not about money its about the energy costs.

Try running with a 20 kg vest and also with a 50 kg vest. One is easier.

There is a reason manufacturing happened in the European colonies: it was cheaper to develop self-suficency instead of waiting for transport ships to provided raw materials or finished products.

Hmm, you want to be "redpilled?" Okay..

What if I told you that you're assuming that every mission that departs from the Moon must necessarily return to the surface of the Earth? What if I told you that you're assuming that there are no missions aside from surface to surface travel? And that as soon as that's not the case anymore, permanent infrastructure starts to make more sense?

The Δv assumptions you have been making have made you a slave. The reality is that the Δv difference is really not that much.

What if you woke up one day and realized you had been assuming that when people talk about supplying a fuel depot they mean entirely from Earth? When actually mining and refining on the Moon itself, coupled with magnetic delivery to cislunar space, would be massively more efficient -- especially if you didn't carry any Earth re-entry capability around with you?

The choice is yours. Take the blue pill, and remain a lunar transit infrastructure skeptic.

Take the red pill.... and find out how far into the cosmos we can go.

No, Clipper switched to falcon heavy. Dragonfly’s launch vehicle remains to be seen

Fraiser cain and scott manley do a great job of explaining space stuff

And this sets the stage for Red Rising, a Sci-Fi series about a lot of things

However in this series, the moon becomes a transport and trade powerhouse. Eventually it makes more sense to send things to and from the moon, rather than earth, because energy. The moon rebels against earth, and the moon becomes the “hub of power” in the future (plus all of the helium-3 in the lunar soil)

Great book series

On Earth, the new world environment is very similar to the old world environment which is why there are so many invasive species. You can't release pigs and horses on the moon and expect them to survive. The industrial revolution occurred more than a century after much of the new world was colonized.

Not launching from the moon is cheaper than launching from the moon. In the early days of resource extraction, it may be better to use those resources on the moon instead of launching them. LG wouldn't be useful until we have more resources than we need on the moon.

Yes, but the LG will most likely start out as a simple way-station between Earth and the Moon

No. That station has had several life extensions and 1/3 of is becoming unserviceable