>Blue Moon is one of the two lander contractors. But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust.

That isn't my impression of NASA/government opinion. Starship HLS is seen as the eventual option, as is obvious from the testing campaign. It'll get there eventually and offer unprecedented capability, but it's very clearly several years out.

Blue's option was being seen as the faster option due to having a less risky critical path. The rocket was already orbital, fewer refueling flights were needed, the engines weren't pushing the limits of materials technology, no reusable heat shield to worry about.

Though, ultimately it's worth keeping in mind that the landers aren't actually the current bottleneck in the program. The space suits are in total development hell.

> But pretty much everyone thinks Artemis is Starship HLS or bust.

Right now it seems like it's Axiom or bust, with their suits. The suits have missed a lot of milestones, and there's not much point in going to the Moon without suits. Latest NASA OIG report put them somewhere in the 2030s at best...

> Does Blue Origin not have another pad? (Did they blow up a pad or a test stand?)

The explosion happened at their only completed pad.

They reportedly have a second pad under construction (for the larger "9x4" variant of New Glenn) but I've not seen a lot of detail about how far along it is.

Would not be surprised to see them accelerating construction of the new pad.

Blue Origin's lunar architecture is designed for a maximum of twelve moon landings per year for the Blue Moon Mk2 without using Orion and the same $4 billion budget per Orion+SLS flight.

SpaceX's architecture requires a second cislunar starship for the return trip. That will mean at most four moon landings per year and even that is optimistic. The large size of Starship makes return trips and lunar refueling really unattractive. If SpaceX wants to compete they will need to build a dedicated cislunar vehicle.

They blew up LC-36.