Infrastructure Stack · Layer 05
Transportation & Logistics
The supply chain from launch pad to surface and back.
Why it matters
The supply chain from launch pad to surface and back.
Getting mass to the Moon is the most visible part of the lunar economy and the part most people already think about. Vencore looks at it as logistics: the chain of launch, transfer, landing, cargo handling and return that every other layer relies on for delivery.
Transportation sets the cost and cadence at which everything else can be built.
Rockets get people to the Moon. Logistics lets them stay.
Inside this layer
6 building blocks
Launch
Heavy and medium launch capacity, and the manifests that determine when infrastructure actually ships.
Transfer
Cislunar transfer stages, orbits such as near-rectilinear halo orbit, and the staging points between Earth and the surface.
Landing
Precision landing, plume effects on the surface, and repeatable delivery to the same site.
Cargo
Standardized containers, offloading and surface handling of payloads that were never designed together.
Return
Ascent, return and sample or product transport back toward Earth.
Orbital mobility
Tugs, refuelable stages and the in-space movement of hardware between orbits.
Connect the stack
Dependencies
Rather than evaluating companies in isolation, we look for dependencies between infrastructure layers, and ask what must exist before the next layer can scale.
This layer depends on
This layer enables
Across every layer
Questions we are watching
Open questions
- What does delivered cost per kilogram to the surface look like at real cadence, not brochure cadence?
- Which cargo and interface standards let payloads from different builders share a lander?
- Where do depots and staging points actually get built first?