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I wonder if spaceX is going to send a permanent colony of bots on moon to make a base there. The latency is a lot lower than Mars and would make a good start.

• greglindahl 10y ago
  Sending a couple of humans around the moon for tourism is a great R&D opportunity, paid for by someone else's money. See: Apollo 8 mission.
• simonh 10y ago
  They're said they have no particular interest in going to the Moon as it wouldn't teach them anything useful about going to or living on Mars and would just be a distraction. Of course if someone else wants to contract them to do so and they can make a buck off it, that might be different.
• vidarh 10y ago
  > Sending a couple of humans around moon for tourism is a waste of resources. One persons waste of resources is another persons revenue. They're not doing it for charity.
• gozur88 10y ago
  They have paying customers. When you're in business to make money, you do what you can bill for. Though I don't know why anyone would want to spend a week locked in a tiny can like that, let alone pay big bucks for it. There's a limit to the discomfort I'd be willing to endure for bragging rights.
• JshWright 10y ago
  The Moon is a terrible "start" for Mars. They are very different places, and require solving very different problems. In many ways, Mars is a lot easier (the atmosphere can do a lot of the work of slowing you down, you have the raw materials to make methane (the rocket fuel SpaceX will be using), etc). People tend to think of the Moon as a "staging point" on the way to Mars, but in reality, it would be a significant detour.