Nasa's new moon landing mission architecture is kind of insane.

[JD_]

I don't see why the lunar gateway nor Orion spacecraft are needed when starship HLS has plenty of room for astronauts internally. The lunar gateway adds unnecessary complexity in my honest opinion. My 2 cents are that the lander should be a much smaller, yet fully reusable LH2/LOX design (so that in the future, water electrolysis can be used to fuel it.), and instead of using an unnecessarily complicated launch architecture, only 3 launches take place: one to transport a high efficiency transfer engine and fuel tank to orbit, another one to transport a habitation module, and a third one to transport the lander. This would be a "mobile space station" design that has just enough volume to fit all the necessary crew while the lander itself is compact and fully reusable design. This would allow the transfer vehicle to be easily expanded wherein the propulsion, habitation, and lander modules can be swapped out and modified as the need arises, and the transfer vehicle can also easily shuttle base modules for a lunar colony. This is far more efficient and conservative that multiple launches to build the gateway, >5 launches to refuel a single starship, and even more launches for crew delivery. Not to mention a LLO would be much more sensible than the NRHO.

[K^2]

The reason Orion's involved is a) Because budgeting works by committee and there are a lot of parties interested in Orion/SLS, and b) Redundancy. Now, the second point was mostly used to excuse the former, but it might end up being the more important of the two depending on how various projects unfold.

As for the Gateway, its purpose is to serve as a gateway. There are a lot of reasons why control of L₁ is of strategic importance, or at least believed to be such, and the Gateway station is meant to function not just as part of the Lunar mission, but also as an L₁ outpost.

Yes, if all we wanted was a quick return to the Moon, plant the flag, stomp some boots, there would be easier ways to do it. We can use Falcon Heavy for the mission and modify an existing upper stage into a lander. Even if we were interested in repeated trips, as you suggest, there are much better options. But that's just not what Artemis is about. That might be the public excuse for it, but it's always been more about corporate interests and claim over L₁. Whether or not the latter is actually a factor in anything is also kind of irrelevant, because again, corporate interests.