Comment by mekdoonggi
6 hours ago
I'm as big of an Elon-hater as you'll find, but I kind of have to disagree. Working on the habitat before the rocket is cart before horse. The rocket is a prerequisite to even an experimental trip to Mars.
If we ever do actually colonize Mars, the progression would look something like: 1. Experimental missions 2. Small but permanent settlement made out of Starships cobbled together 3. New construction with increasing proportion of in-situ resources until fully independent
IMHO, to achieve anything close to the timelines Elon has publicly stated you need to do both at once. The habitats are a decade long development effort at a minimum. The capacity and dimensions of the launch vehicle are known, there is no reason to not be working on the prototypes now.
There is so much foundational technology that has to be developed first to even make them a possibility. Even your step 2 requires them to be fully developed and reliable, because there is no flying in spares from Earth if something breaks down. If I were to give Elon the benefit of the doubt this would be one of the factors in the refocus on the Moon base, but even that is dubious. I still think the "make humanity multi-planetary" talk is a diversion.
> I'm as big of an Elon-hater as you'll find
The new "I'm not a racist, but...".
Why did you feel the need to add this statement before saying something which might be taken as agreeing with something the man said? Why does it always have to come down to who said something instead of what that person said? Just say you agree with the statement, don't mention who said it. If the knee-jerk-downvote brigade comes to punish you just eat the downvotes in the knowledge that the downvoters just can't cope with dissenting opinions.