Proclaiming things is very easy.
Yes, SpaceX wants to ship millions of people to Mars, but realistically they are several decades away from even starting that. You want to get a small permanent settlement on Mars (like a crewed research station), and get some experience with operating it, before you start sending heaps of people. And probably the initial focus will be just on growing that crewed research station (from 20 people to 200 people to 2000 people). And only then will you have enough information to really plan making it significantly bigger. I doubt we'll get there until some time in the second half of this century.
In the medium term, I think the Moon is a more realistic target for the private sector. The total cost per a person-year of a crewed lunar base is a lot less than a crewed Martian base, so you can pay for a much bigger lunar settlement for the same budget. You can also sell lunar surface tourism to the ultra-rich, and hope that economies of scale will gradually drive the price down; your average billionaire can spare a couple of weeks for a trip to the Moon, not the almost 3 years a Mars round trip would take. How about Hollywood filming on-location on the Moon? Reality TV shows? Professional sports competitions? All a lot more feasible given the much lower travel time (about 3 days) and light distance (a bit over 1 light second). I doubt any of these would be massive revenue sources (at least at first), but they'll be economically feasible long before their Martian equivalents become so.
Not saying the dream won’t eventually come true, but it if it does, it will take many decades. Come 2100, I think there will be a lot less than 1 million people on Mars.
Mars is still a pipe dream. You might as well give the credit to Edgar Rice Burroughs for as far as realizing it has come.
So, not in the foreseeable future, given the new Space Race with China.
Ofc the government is an important customer for any launch provider (not just SpaceX), given that a lot of current space activity is military in nature. That just comes with the territory.
Edgar Rice Borroughs died before the first man-made rocket reached the orbit. Writing about Mars isn't the same as building a ship that can reach it.
I am not a native speaker of English, so I am not sure how much deprecation does the term "pipe dream" contain. But I don't think that manned flight to Mars is wild and unattainable fantasy. I would say that it is on the same level as manned flight to the orbit by 1945 - not yet here, but technically and economically feasible in a decade or two.
I agree, but the point was they are tied to NASA and NASA's projects for the foreseeable future, not that they are going away tomorrow.
"But I don't think that manned flight to Mars is wild and unattainable fantasy"
It wasn't too long ago you were talking about colonization. So which is it? Colonization or a manned flight?
Yeah I believe a manned flight is possible. If we were really motivated it would have been possible before my lifetime, certainly before SpaceX.
Colonization is leaps and bounds beyond that.
Well, I reacted to this sentence, which is a bit ambiguous. But I don't think there is a big gap between manned flight and colonization in case of Mars. Mars is very far, which means that from the very beginning, the crews will have to maximize their independence from the Earth.
You can supply Moon bases by cargo from the Earth easily, but people on Mars, even if only dozens during the initial period, will have to optimize everything for self-sufficiency as much as possible.
And if you prioritize self-sufficiency, you need more people, more robots, more factories = in a word, colonization comes naturally from that.
That's because you think the problem is getting there. Staying there is the real problem, and it's one that hasn't had any real advances. It's why things like Artemis are important and colonization of Mars is still a fantasy.
In the case of Mars, the gap between getting there and staying there is much, much smaller than in the case of Earth orbit or even the Moon. It is just too far for Earth to be of any help. Whatever goes wrong, the astronauts will have to solve on their own. Which means that they must be prepared for a very wide spectrum of adverse events.
This is a good fundament for a very resilient settlement - out of need.
It is painfully obvious to me that we haven't even managed self sustained colonization of the most extreme environments of Earth. Mars isn't just going to happen by accident because someone flies there.
Additionally, SpaceX is not going to manage it alone when a manned flight does happen. It will be NASA's Artemis program.
Modern people residing on Earth don't generally have to be self sufficient for months. Even in isolated places like the South Pole during winter, windows of opportunity for transport to civilization open here and now.
On the other hand, the Sentinelese are self sufficient. Yeah, on a primitive level, but they manage it, because they simply have to. None of us here on HN would be able to live like the Sentinelese.
If someone really dumps a hundred people on a distant planet, they have to prepare the mission to be self-sufficient for at least a year or two.
"If someone really dumps a hundred people on a distant planet"... they die.
Yes the incentive to not die is exactly why there is a ton of work to be done before it is a practical reality.
Really, even transportation of 100 people at once is currently a fantasy.