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Comment by spwa4 | Hacker News Reader

What I think is very ironic is that Blue Origin actually beat SpaceX to Mars, after a decade of SpaceX "make life multiplanetary". A few months after Blue Origin did that SpaceX announced now they'll just go to the Moon, no more Mars.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-blue-origin-launch-tw...

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That article says that Rocket Lab is building the spacecraft designed by NASA. Blue Origin is just launching it.

Falcon Heavy launched a spacecraft that used a Mars gravity assist in 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(spacecraft) same with the Europa Clipper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper going to Jupiter

They also launched the roadster that has an orbital radius out to the distance of Mars

That's not irony, that's shallow thinking. If you want to "make life multiplanetary" you would do it by building a very large, reusable, refillable rocket that can land 100 tons on Mars.

Which is exactly what SpaceX is doing.

[p.s.: The drive to land on the moon makes sense in the context of "how can we fund colonizing Mars?" Starlink funded the initial development of Starship. Musk believes (rightly or wrongly) that data centers in orbit and on the moon can fund the next set of projects.]

also a great way to raise money on abstract and impossible promises, musks specialty

Data Centers in orbit could be the single dumbest idea Musk has ever expressed. They would be in every respect worse than on land and there is just no solution for heat dissapation.

As stupid as the basic idea is the scope he's described is beyond any reasonable endeavor it's nor clear our society could achieve it if it was the singular goal of our species and what for? There is simply no use nor demand for it and it's by no means a durable investment we should have to continue the effort forever to sustain it.

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