> We are so incredibly far from being able to build a sustainable colony on Mars, especially at a realistic cost, that it makes no sense as a product goal.
"Dying on Mars, just not on impact" is Musk's final bucket list item. Almost everything else he does is to enable that vision, either directly by creating the tech, or indirectly because he knows this is expensive.
He may well fail, nobody's ever done this and we don't know how many surprises there will be.
But the ship working well enough for $200k tickets is plausible.
(The idea that banks will give people loans for that, not so much: without multi-planetary trade, nothing that happens on Mars can repay a debt on Earth, and I don't see Mars as having any special economic benefits to make such trade worthwhile).
"Dying on Mars, just not on impact" is Musk's final bucket list item. Almost everything else he does is to enable that vision, either directly by creating the tech, or indirectly because he knows this is expensive.
He may well fail, nobody's ever done this and we don't know how many surprises there will be.
But the ship working well enough for $200k tickets is plausible.
(The idea that banks will give people loans for that, not so much: without multi-planetary trade, nothing that happens on Mars can repay a debt on Earth, and I don't see Mars as having any special economic benefits to make such trade worthwhile).