4 ms·

I hope Elon Musk reads your inquiry

• ballade 9y ago
  I would incredibly surprised if he hasn't already thought about similar things. I remember in an interview last year he stated that the Interplanetary Transport System SpaceX is building for whisking humans to mars and other celestial objects in the solar system will be tiny in comparison to the spaceships that humanity will build in the latter half of this century. Bear in mind, the ITS has more than 3x the lift-off thrust of the Saturn V, which is the largest rocket ever built.
  • kuschku 9y ago
    Actually, it does not. Musk announced recently that the ITS would be a lot smaller, actually being slightly smaller than the Saturn V, as he couldn't get as many subsidies as he expected to.
• watersb 9y ago
  Paul Allen provided a lot of the funding for SETI Institute's radio array design and construction, but operational budget has been really tough. It's not quite enough to build the instruments. We have to fund the ongoing science, too. Philanthropy does play a role here, too, of course: endowments for academic research, but generally not as inspiring as making Very Large objects.