3 ms·

Why? Not everything is about Elon’s wacky plan to settle Mars.

by Gud 4mo ago

spwa4 4mo ago
SpaceX is incredibly sensitive about this after they've been beaten to Mars orbit by ... it's quite a list: NASA/JPL, the Soviet/Lavochkin Mars program, ESA, ISRO, ESA+Roscosmos, the UAE Space Agency/MBRSC + JAXA (Japan), and China’s CNSA. And Blue Origin: it launched NASA’s ESCAPADE probes. And while they are still en route and are expected to enter Mars orbit in 2027, orbital dynamics means it's not possible to beat them. Oh and adding these up you might think SpaceX has been beaten to Mars 7 times, but that's not correct. They've been beaten 17 times to Mars orbit in total, and that number will inevitably rise to 18 even if they launched a Mars mission tomorrow. It's over 30 if you count individual vehicles that launched on one rocket separately. (yes, I'm a bit disappointed, I worked on a canceled European Mars mission long ago. Unfortunately, the financial math on why the entire company was canned was entirely correct, and yes I'm a bit angry that SpaceX gets such incredible funding, with a financial plan that, while better than the one we used, still isn't good enough) Doubly so now it has been made clear that Falcon 9 is a failure. Reusable rockets are, as an innovation, in fact not good enough for a company to profitably sell access to earth orbit, as it turns out (but was extensively predicted) (note: this is because starlink is of course using SpaceX funds, and is making a big loss doing it. In other words: the market for falcon9 launches is not big enough to sustain SpaceX, without artificial tricks that look good in the short term but unless something changes, increase the losses in the long term) [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/13/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-nasa-spacecraft-new-glenn-mars https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/13/jeff-bezos-b...

3 ms·

Why? Not everything is about Elon’s wacky plan to settle Mars.

by Gud 4mo ago

Why? Not everything is about Elon’s wacky plan to settle Mars.

spwa4 4mo ago
SpaceX is incredibly sensitive about this after they've been beaten to Mars orbit by ... it's quite a list: NASA/JPL, the Soviet/Lavochkin Mars program, ESA, ISRO, ESA+Roscosmos, the UAE Space Agency/MBRSC + JAXA (Japan), and China’s CNSA. And Blue Origin: it launched NASA’s ESCAPADE probes. And while they are still en route and are expected to enter Mars orbit in 2027, orbital dynamics means it's not possible to beat them. Oh and adding these up you might think SpaceX has been beaten to Mars 7 times, but that's not correct. They've been beaten 17 times to Mars orbit in total, and that number will inevitably rise to 18 even if they launched a Mars mission tomorrow. It's over 30 if you count individual vehicles that launched on one rocket separately. (yes, I'm a bit disappointed, I worked on a canceled European Mars mission long ago. Unfortunately, the financial math on why the entire company was canned was entirely correct, and yes I'm a bit angry that SpaceX gets such incredible funding, with a financial plan that, while better than the one we used, still isn't good enough) Doubly so now it has been made clear that Falcon 9 is a failure. Reusable rockets are, as an innovation, in fact not good enough for a company to profitably sell access to earth orbit, as it turns out (but was extensively predicted) (note: this is because starlink is of course using SpaceX funds, and is making a big loss doing it. In other words: the market for falcon9 launches is not big enough to sustain SpaceX, without artificial tricks that look good in the short term but unless something changes, increase the losses in the long term) [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/13/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-nasa-spacecraft-new-glenn-mars https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/13/jeff-bezos-b...