Ah, fair enough; that's pretty different from "SpaceX [as a whole] is fantasy" (much more reasonable). As far as financial issues, SpaceX is pretty hugely succ

Ah, fair enough; that's pretty different from "SpaceX [as a whole] is fantasy" (much more reasonable). As far as financial issues, SpaceX is pretty hugely successful with commercial launch as it is (even more so with the new NASA deal announced this morning); but, worst case financial scenario (as the inside joke goes), "Hey Congress, we're about to send a manned spacecraft to Mars, and some country's flag is going in with them...". As far as technical issues, I can't really subscribe to the idea that the team hasn't accounted for or will inevitably fail to account for some massive unknown/unforeseen/insurmountable blocker on the road to Mars. It's certainly possible, but there really isn't any fundamentally unique problem (that I can see) in a manned mission to Mars which hasn't already been solved in some form in the past.