I'm glad these guys are making waves in getting stuff to space, but maybe they should focus on getting one or two people to LEO, which none of them have even tried to do yet, before they start thinking about colonizing other planets.
That seems to be exactly what they're working on. The fact that they may have ambitions beyond that doesn't mean that they're not working on the immediate problems. They are not conflicting objectives.
Although if I was a private space-launch company, I don't know if I would really be working on man-rated spacecraft at all. It seems like too much risk. You can blow up a lot of unmanned payloads and nobody (other than your insurance carrier) will bat an eye; blow up a couple of astronauts and you're probably out of business. I'd want to stay in the cargo delivery business as long as possible, and leave the man-rated stuff to deep-pocketed governments, so that I could continue developing new propulsion systems without the necessary conservatism that a man-rated system requires.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...
Compare this to Virgin Galactic. They are working on a system that is great for tourist rides, and other suborbital missions. But unless we're talking something really small, they aren't inserting anything into LEO.
Getting into LEO is a critical step for getting past GEO orbit out into the solar system.
But if you just focus on LEO you end up with Virgin Galactic- they will beat Blue Origin on costs all day long. Thus in the tourist ride business their superior economics will let them win that business.
But if you want to go to mars you need heavy lift like SpaceX and Blue Origin are building.
http://spacenews.com/virgin-galactic-signs-sky-and-space-glo...