> Cargo rockets don’t all need to be launched at once, they just need to be ready to burn in the launch window. So what's the plan, launch all those rockets in

> Cargo rockets don’t all need to be launched at once, they just need to be ready to burn in the launch window. So what's the plan, launch all those rockets into LEO, and then have them sit there for up to 2 years before sending them on their merry way? Whos doing maintenance? Who repairs these rockets when they get hit by space debris? Who'd even know one was damaged? What's the backup plan when almost inevitably some of them will fail come travel-day? More rockets? Whos doing maintenance on them, and who pays for them? Where are all these rockets coming from btw.? Spaceships aint cheap, they have to earn their keep by doing things like ferrying commercial cargo into LEO. Who can afford to have a fleet of them sitting around doing nothing? Look, I'm not saying that any of this is impossible. I'm just saying that a VERY hard task, that we have never done before, just got an order of magnitude harder. At what point in this hardship am I allowed to wave a little cost-benefit-analysis and ask what exactly we gain from sending people to Mars (aka. nothing that can't be done better with robotic probes)? > Return journeys will likely be limited to passenger rockets. Let's start with: return journeys will be limited to rockets that are still operational after landing in a rock-desert, with zero support structures, on a sheet of powdery regolith-dust, and after having been blasted for months with Martian dust-storms, and subjected to extreme temperature differentials.