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For the point number 3 you might be too much under influence of SpaceX marketing and launches. China is on their way to mars as well with Tianwen-1, India is r
by ozim 6y ago
For the point number 3 you might be too much under influence of SpaceX marketing and launches.
China is on their way to mars as well with Tianwen-1, India is ramping up their space program, ESA is launching their stuff with Ariane vehicle as far as Jupiter, Russians with Angara have plan for crewed moon flyby in 2029. So it is not like other nations won't have that capability soon after US and not like US has it right now or next year.
Second part is that there is still not that much of commercial gain in going to Mars, Moon or other place. Most of the money is made in LEO with satellite communications, gps, utilities. Space mining is not going to be profitable for really long time into the future. Where going to India was profitable right away if you had a ship to carry spices you were really ahead of the others. Space ship capability is just the starting point and we still have to find something that is worth enough to send those ships there, even with SpaceX reusable rockets it is still not worth to mine rare earth elements somewhere else in the solar system.
- imglorp 6y agoNo marketing needed - SpaceX is a decade ahead of all other Earth agencies. Yes it's very hard to get a soft landing on Mars, and props to any agency that can do it. We expect great things from Tianwen-1. But it's many times harder to develop a complete process to soft land 100mt there, 100 times a year. This is the same engineering process that spanked ULA, who with a century of experience and head start, has yet to complete its commercial crew rating, plus they are single shot, not reusable.