Now, to do that, they'll need to scratch the government's back. Doesn't mean that Mars isn't priority #1.
To be more precise, the company is run by the DoD with significant technical and financial assistance. Elon is the main conduit between those deep resource and the rest of the company. He regularly meets with all teams to ensure they are aligned with "higher purposes".
To be even more precise, Elon is a front-man for a right-wing multi-decade program in American hegemony and actualizing it's crowning achievement--the Strategic Defense Initiative.
both of these cannot be true at the same time.
No, the internet isn't a hive mind, and is never going to have simple unitary opinions except as rare coincidence.
> both of these cannot be true at the same time.
And yet a planet-scale information network can easily include voices that believe each of them simultaneously, because people disagree.
Musk wants to build a Mars colony. DOD wants Brilliant Pebbles / SDI. Perhaps a trade can be made? You'll need much of the same tech for each.
If SpaceX is run by DOD, why is it not run by DOD? Why pretend otherwise? The best engineers won't work to build SDI? Thousands work for Boeing/Lockheed. They're all that much worse?
Look at Starship objectively. It's not a Mars rocket. That bellyflop through the atmosphere stunt won't work on Mars, and man-rating it even for operation around Earth is extremely dubious. The habitats which would supposedly be used for Mars colonization don't exist and aren't in development, so if you think Starship is a Mars rocket you should realize that it's a bridge to nowhere. Starship is being developed to launch tons of satellites cheap. It makes a lot of sense for that and it makes zero sense for Mars colonization.
Given the weight of the circumstantial evidence, particularly the entirety of Michael Griffin's career and role in SpaceX's existence, it is more reasonable to assume they're lying about Mars than to assume Mars is the true motivation. Your prior for Elon Musk lying about anything should be through the roof anyway.
I'm only an enthusiastic layman on the topic of spacefaring, but isn't the launch vehicle a critical variable when designing habitats for other planets? It doesn't seem practical to take anything much further than paper until the constraints of your launch vehicle are known.
Habitats designed to be launched on Starship+Superheavy are going to be wildly different from those made to launch on practically anything else because of the vast difference in lift capacity and available volume. To add to that, it arguably doesn't make sense to develop habitats at all unless something similar to Starship is flying.
So from that perspective, it would seem to me logical to wait and see if SpaceX can actually make Starship+Superheavy work or not before committing to anything. No point in burning money on something that'll never be practical to launch.
> To add to that, it arguably doesn't make sense to develop habitats at all unless something similar to Starship is flying.
It doesn't make sense developing Starship unless you have paying customers lined up. Launching satellite constellations is a market that actually exists, Mars colonization doesn't and won't for decades at least, by which time Starship will likely be obsolete anyway.
Furthermore, you're ignoring the part where Starship isn't a Mars rocket and doesn't even resemble a Mars rocket. If Elon Musk had never spoken of Mars, there would be zero reason to suspect that Starship was meant to be a Mars rocket. His words alone are the basis for this belief. How much are his words actually worth to you?
There is work on suits, life support systems and lots of other things.
Your whole argument is basically 'its hard' and SpaceX doesnt have perfectly worked out plan to solve every single problem. Yeah no shit shirlock.
And Starship is a Mars rocket. Your evidence for that non existant. SpaceX has presented Mars entery and landing profiles. Refueling makes it perfect for Mars.
I tend to trust the people who have actually engineer such systems, have built hardware and have simulations.
The claim that its all a conspiricy theory is simply not credible. Honestly just make yourself look ridicoulus.