How many of those things that have never been done/attempted before sit downstream of poor strategic decisions?
Even if you want to put less then that on the moon, anything but a tiny lander still needs refueling and reusable launch.
In fact, anything not in space wouldn't be ideal.
But that's a political choice, and Moon base is what NASA and congress are working towards.
I became a starship skeptic because I thought the project management was bullshit. Nothing I've seen changes in my mind about that.
Starship has come as close to landing an upper stage as its possible on water, and from orbital velocity. That's already a huge accomplishment and the landing on land has also been demonstrated.
Problems are constantly being worked on in parallel. Transferring fuel between tanks in the Ship is literally something already tested and that's a big part of the validation of inter-ship fuel transfer. There was even a NASA contract about exactly that. There is parallel work on the launch site, ship the booster and the interior (this is just less visible but its being worked on as we can see from the contract).
Orbital refueling can continually be worked on even if some ships fail landings.
> It could easily take another 10 years for upper stage reusability
Or it could take less ...
And even so, if we ever want a serious moon base, an architecture like that is required. The tiny BlueOrigin lander might be ok for flags and footprints but not to deploy serious infrastructure.
The whole starship project is the wrong way to get to the wrong goal.
Do the math and you will see the same, its obvious once you think about it. Even most the smaller lander need refueling.
And if you actually think its viable to do Apollo style where we put everything on a single stack and land on the moon like that and build a base that way, you need to get your head examined.