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There's nothing beyond existing economies I'm interested in being part of, least until post-scarcity—automation makes everything in space at ~0 cost in human labor, so "cost" has no meaning. In a scarcity economy, the system that automates the value of scarce resources most effectively (markets) is fine by me. That's what Starlink is supposed to be for, that and little contracts (launches, HLS, etc) to offset raising the TRLs they need. The above regarding scarcity is ALSO relevant to Mars colonization. 10 years ago, I'm sure the idea was send people to Mars, where people then do work on Mars to make the new city (New Donner?). I'd say now, they might want to send some people to Mars (because people on Mars is cool), but instead of 100k people a year for 10 years, I'd think sending 66k robots a year makes more sense. (1/3 charging any given time, the other 2/3 working, so working 25 hours a day (erm, Sol)). Solar panels? Check, they have a company making those. batteries for night? Yep. Tunnels? Yep. Regolith moving vehicles? Check. Robots? Check. Send everything automated, and a few people around to run the robots.

The cost DOWN the gravity well is actually pretty low. I think it's only possibly economical for certain manufacturing, not everything, and ALL the inputs for whatever that stuff is need to come from space. for those. Finished product deorbited to parachute down (winged return vehicles?).

They need to stay alive, the launch business will never make anyone meaningful amount of money right now. The total global launch market is chump change. Anyone thinking they are pushing Mars for money, this is underpants gnome level nonsense... It took a "skilled" reporter to figure this out? Starlink has a nonzero chance of making more money than the launch market, which can NEVER make large amounts of money until something like mass tourist spaceflight is a thing (airline level prices and airline level traffic volume—so incredibly unlikely). Total available launch market is on the order of $10B. That's it, about a week of Amazon revenue—so of COURSE "anything else" would be a revenue stream. The goal is to make money to pay for Mars. Of course. It's crazy. But if they wanna spend money on Mars, good for them—I'm happy to watch. If it's not economical to do it, it's not going to happen unless someone does it with their own money. I tend to think it'll be a combo of stuff like SpaceX, and the somewhat more prosaic goals of Bezos. Moving some industry to space, getting resources from asteroids, etc. This creates some economic incentive for capability in space, which can bootstrap efforts to move humanity off Earth (any who wish this) assuming such a move makes economic sense. The longer such a move takes, the less required people are, however—automation. Course what comes with intelligent automation is the ability to build stuff so that humans need only show up. Companies have to exist to make money at all, which requires cleaning house sometimes, and optimizing.

There is no economic case for Mars at all. Or the Moon. At some point maybe space resources become important—but not down a gravity well, that will be asteroids. SpaceX is not doing Mars for profit, it's a way to SPEND profit. Assuming they can make a self-sufficient city (again, I'm no Marsbro), then maybe they charge people to move there to at least break even on new arrivals vs whatever input is desirable (self-sufficient doesn't mean they won't want Earth stuff).

There's a lot to be said for a smaller lander, actually. In the dystopian world of 1-stack missions to the Moon, or 1-stack PLUS architectures (anything looking like SLS at this point), bigger is better—because at least something about the mission shouldn't suck (and we're stuck with SLS/Orion for a bit). Moving past SLS/Orion, if I was in charge of Artemis sans SLS, I'd push my contractors for a tug/ferry architecture with lots of refilling in LEO. Starship in various forms: HLS cause that's already contracted, but a orbital depot version (also sorta on the table already), and a tug/tanker variant. The new versions I would suggest? A 1-way version(s) as pre-placed habitat designed for long duration on the surface. A smaller version—meaning: shorter—where you have a lander that only holds props for a RT from lunar orbit to the surface and back (with large margin). This is effectively a third stage on SS version 3 where the total vehicle height is the same (ie: SS divided into 2 stages). A short lander based on SS—just the payload section, plus a few rings below—would house 1 Rvac, and the landing engines, plus the crew section (HLS-like). Such a lander masses maybe 30-35 tons (dry of props, but with crew consumables, etc). With just a couple small tanks (a couple rings) for ~100-200t of props, the thing can RT to lunar orbit easily (in fact 1.5 round trips). Same with the smaller BO lander. With pre-placed habs, no need for a giant lander. Land, move to your Moon house, work from there, go back to lander to go home.

in progress entry burn Perfect landing Landing number 300

this one in ~20 min, and a Starlink 2 minutes later.

To scale.

Yes, that's the problem with living someplace where the only place to live has to be built/managed or you die. It was a response to a response. I think economically, Mars only works post-scarcity. (and again, I'm not a Mars Bro)

This. "Natural" systems appear by themselves. "Unnatural" systems must be imposed with force. At scale, we already knows which happen by itself. If King Cnut makes markets illegal along with the tide, he creates black markets (and the tide keeps coming as well). Because that's not interesting.

"The mission is targeting launch at 10:34 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 6, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida." (from a NASA email I got)

Not sure why I'd care about anyone's opinion who's not paying for Artemis. I'll happily commit to not critiquing whatever space program he pays for with his own tax dollars monetary units. Artemis is a stupid program, to be honest. It was making lemonade out of the lemons at hand (Orion + SLS), nothing more. I did not watch more than a few seconds, but what difference does Elon's promises make, anyway? It's not SLS, SpaceX only gets paid for achieving milestones. Should the "promises" not get kept... they make no money. Same applies to Blue Origin.

Assuming the landing engines stay a thing, it hardly matters which way they land it, honestly. Like the XEUS concept (ACES Centaur with separate landing engines for horizontal landing), it could certainly work. Doesn't move the ball down the field for SpaceX's own goals, however. That said, bespoke Starships have already been suggested for other use cases, so a particularly involved customer could certainly ask for such a thing.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/artemis-campaign-development-division/human-landing-system-program/work-underway-on-large-cargo-landers-for-nasas-artemis-moon-missions/ has the door=crane idea I think I posted a sketch of that in one of the threads a few years ago. Yep: HLS shows more—and smaller—landing engines I see.

Regular people save up and do Everest all the time—even fail, and pay to do it again. Even that only takes months. Mars is a multi-year commitment. A handful of people doing something is not "tourism," IMHO, that's adventurer stuff. Isaacson, for example. Adventure travel is the next level—and Everest is a subset of that, but many went to Nepal just to Trek back when it was harder than now. I did that back when the Everest base Camp trek was a 30+ day (walking) commitment. Real tourism means mass travel IMO. I'd add that Everest had a progression from people who had to organize real climbs—possibly a couple months in country, and arranged for climbing Sherpas, porters, etc—before it got to the point you paid someone $20k-$50k to do all that for you. So we might have maybe a few billionaires doing something, and so few we will literally all be able to name them. Way fewer than pay to be led up Everest. That's not a business model for "tourism." At some point for the Moon, we could have "adventure tourism" that gets the sort of people who do difficult hikes. It's will start at Everest level numbers—10s, then maybe hundreds (following the real to guided expedition track). I won't call it tourism until regular (affluent) people can afford a trip to the Moon. Maybe a save up, once in a lifetime thing, but enough that large numbers can do it. $100k? For the tourism model to work, it needs large numbers, though. I never see that closing for Mars.

Hmmm

Only off by 10 years! Note that they in no way even attempted to achieve this goal. That would have required some flight article (even just a test like Green Run) about the time they tested the boilerplate Orion on Delta IV Heavy in 2014. Green run was 2021. So yeah, that should have been 2014. Or earlier. At least they got paid every year for their delays.

The amount of wealth required would be absurd, as it includes a multi-year commitment. So you have to be rich enough to be gone for years. I suppose with the decline in people living normal lives (ie: more and more childless people), blowing their savings on this as "something to do" might happen—or single people who are no longer young. Leaving Earth for a couple years when you have family is not a thing. If you are younger, kids have school, etc, you have a job... can't leave. If retired, your kids likely have families—and you don't want to miss out on that. Maybe with torch drives tourism to Mars is a thing, but not before. The Moon? Yeah, tourism is the killer app for large scale habitats there.

SLS was required by the law that created it to be operational (not a test flight!) by the end of 2016. "GOAL FOR OPERATIONAL CAPABILITY. It shall be the goal to achieve full operational capability for the transportation vehicle developed pursuant to this subsection by not later than December 31, 2016." ICPS was only supposed to fly exactly once, they have neither the EUS, nor the MLP to fly with EUS built. They don't have spacesuits for EVA. Assuming they can fly Artemis III by 2026, they will only be 10 years late!

Any place humans live off Earth (at least in this solar system) is a 100% built environment. Under the assumption 0.38g is not deleterious, the only way to get a colony going is to simply build it. Improvements in robotics will at least help this along. Have an outpost, then send supplies and the robots build out infrastructure.

SLS is a waste of an SLS.