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What race to Mars? At best three entities are even aiming to send people to Mars, and all of them at a quite leisurely pace: NASA, ESA and SpaceX. And by all ac

What race to Mars? At best three entities are even aiming to send people to Mars, and all of them at a quite leisurely pace: NASA, ESA and SpaceX. And by all accounts, they are cooperating more rather than competing. Some people take Elon Musk too seriously. His timelines are always overambitious. Starship will not be going to Mars (even unmanned) any time soon. Even though Musk says it's necessary for interplanetary travel, at least the first dozen or "Starships" or so will have much less ambitious tasks: Launching Starlink satellites, maybe other commercial payloads and of course going to the moon. All of those missions require multiple prototypes. I'd be surprised if any Starship makes its way to Mars in the next five years. More like ten years, even for the first unmanned mission.

lapcat 3y ago
> Some people take Elon Musk too seriously. That's the point of the article. The idea of colonizing Mars has become a kind of religion.
- bayesian_horse 3y ago
  I actually meant the author. She is taking Musk too seriously. There may be people in the general public, who are unrelated to SpaceX or anything space related, who are crazy about Mars. But my point is that even SpaceX has plenty to do besides going to Mars, and nobody in government or private industry is pushing for Mars colonization with any kind of religious fervor. Ambitions are a good thing. I do believe it is a good idea to have a permanent settlement on Mars, mostly for scientific reasons. But there's no "race" toward this goal, not even a forceful push. Progress is slow but steady now.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > There may be people in the general public, who are unrelated to SpaceX or anything space related, who are crazy about Mars. There may be? This seems almost deliberately obtuse. The only reason the author takes Musk seriously is that Musk has hordes of followers and worshippers. You can see it here on HN. You can see it on Twitter.

lapcat 3y ago

> Some people take Elon Musk too seriously. That's the point of the article. The idea of colonizing Mars has become a kind of religion.

bayesian_horse 3y ago
I actually meant the author. She is taking Musk too seriously. There may be people in the general public, who are unrelated to SpaceX or anything space related, who are crazy about Mars. But my point is that even SpaceX has plenty to do besides going to Mars, and nobody in government or private industry is pushing for Mars colonization with any kind of religious fervor. Ambitions are a good thing. I do believe it is a good idea to have a permanent settlement on Mars, mostly for scientific reasons. But there's no "race" toward this goal, not even a forceful push. Progress is slow but steady now.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > There may be people in the general public, who are unrelated to SpaceX or anything space related, who are crazy about Mars. There may be? This seems almost deliberately obtuse. The only reason the author takes Musk seriously is that Musk has hordes of followers and worshippers. You can see it here on HN. You can see it on Twitter.