A suggestion made last week by acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy that SpaceX could be booted from the agency’s upcoming moon-landing plans has rocked the space industry.

Now, behind the scenes, pitches for alternate paths to the lunar surface are quietly starting to take shape.

SpaceX currently has a $2.9 billion contract to prepare its gargantuan Starship rocket system to ferry astronauts to the moon’s surface as part of NASA’s Artemis III mission. However, citing delays in Starship’s development and competitive pressure from China, NASA asked SpaceX and Blue Origin — which holds a separate lunar lander contract with the space agency — to submit plans to expedite development of their respective spacecraft by October 29. Both companies have responded.

But the space agency is also asking the broader commercial space industry to detail how they might get the job done more quickly, hinting that NASA leadership is prepared to sideline its current partners.

CNN spoke with half a dozen companies about how they plan to respond to NASA’s call to action, which the agency will formally issue once the government shutdown ends, according to a source familiar with the matter.

While some of the potential proposals appear more straightforward than the current moon-landing plan that uses Starship, each involves constructing and testing new spacecraft designs, a process that typically takes at least six or seven years, noted Casey Drier, the chief of space policy at the nonprofit exploration advocacy group Planetary Society.

This could pose an issue for NASA’s timeline. China aims to land its astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030, and Duffy has repeatedly indicated he views beating China as a national security imperative.

Artemis III is currently slated to happen as early as mid-2027, and NASA has signaled that the current pace of Starship development is threatening to push that target months or years into the future.

“There’s a certain part of the moon that everyone knows is the best,” Duffy said, referring to the moon’s largely unexplored south pole region — the target landing site for NASA’s Artemis III astronauts.

“We have ice there. We have sunlight there. We want to get there first and claim that for America,” he said in August.

This NASA illustration shows Artemis astronauts working at the lunar south pole region.