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kindslayer t1_ixgx1kf wrote

Reply to comment by fabulousmarco in Realistically speaking When do you think we will land humans on Mars? by EnaGrimm

I think we're all familliar of Musk being bad at promised deadlines lol. But yeah, even with the recent sucessful high-altitude test, we have yet to see an orbital test anytime soon. So yeah, it is safe to say that there's no definite proof yet that Musk can actually accomplish landing humans on Mars. But then, we also can't say that the starship progress is not going anywhere. Finally, we can just say that NASA and SpaceX have their advancements and pros, SpaceX for effective landing systems for rockets, and NASA for the actual accomplished plans of placing human presence beyond Earth.

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fabulousmarco t1_ixjnh4c wrote

I'm not debating it, but still for the Starship plan to work there are so many critical points to pass that I simply don't feel we've seen enough at this stage.

Launching and landing the rocket is certainly two of them, which of course they've achieved. But for a Mars mission to work they also need to demonstrate high launch cadence with Starship due to the several orbital refueling launches required for each mission. This in turn means that any reusability strategy (e.g. heat shield, Raptor durability, etc...) and fast construction also need to work as well as envisioned.

And of course landing on Mars on rough terrain, launching from Mars (something which has never been attempted before), habitat and life support for crewed missions on a scale which is simply not required for the ISS and so on.

I'm not saying they won't achieve it, but I find it laughable when people talk about the SpaceX Mars missions as if they were a done deal.

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