Source: Joe Barnard

The entire mission structure is stupid. It sorta-kinda makes sense for Mars, and viewing Artemis as a trial run for Mars makes it almost-sensible. Except that the Mars landing was entirely predictably cancelled.

It was a good idea, if possibly premature. If the current US lunar program goes beyond dick waving to a permanent base, the design will be used. I'm sure China will crib some notes too.

Whacking a nuclear reactor and an ion engine on it and pointing it at Mars is an epic proposal though.

(If it happens, too much political flip flopping fucks NASA on the regular, and the current environment blows).

Idk about "good idea". Gateway as a Lunar tollbooth was a compromise at the end of a bunch of compromises. Orion's service module is undersized, so it needs a weird Lunar orbit. Getting to that has some weird launch windows, and SLS is finicky, so pre-staged hardware (landers, resupply pods) waiting for Orion might have to loiter for weeks or months. So they'd meet up at Gateway? But big landers and no resupply pods make that station unnecessary.

My sci-fi nerd self still wants a Lunar orbital station. And surface stations. And a bunch of LEO stations, including a polar one. And an Earth-Moon L2 station. And...

I'd love to see a beyond-LEO station purpose-built to test deep space transit technology. Making it a necessary part of the Lunar architecture never made sense.