In political jargon, a self-licking ice cream cone is a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself. The phrase appeared to have been first used in 1991–1992, in a book about Gulf War weapons systems by Norman Friedman, and On Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones, a paper by Pete Worden about NASA's bureaucracy, to describe the relationship between the Space Shuttle and Space Station.
And now we have SLS, and a planned lunar space station whose only purpose is to be a place SLS can get to; the moon itself being out of reach.
Make no mistake, a lunar space station, no matter its name, is not a gateway to anywhere. The only defensible place to pause on the way from low earth orbit to anywhere else in the solar system is high earth orbit. Stopping at high lunar orbit is pure cost, no benefit.
It might be useful to park spare fuel in low lunar orbit for a moon landing, but there is no value in a space station there.
In political jargon, a self-licking ice cream cone is a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself. The phrase appeared to have been first used in 1991–1992, in a book about Gulf War weapons systems by Norman Friedman, and On Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones, a paper by Pete Worden about NASA's bureaucracy, to describe the relationship between the Space Shuttle and Space Station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licking_ice_cream_cone