MCT

>why would SpaceX be sending NASA astronauts?
Because SpaceX doesn't have the $10 billion they've said it will take to build ITS, let alone the $20 billion it will end up taking, let alone the other $30 billion it will take to do everything else you need for a manned Mars program.

NASA is the only reasonable prospect to pay for that. NASA gets upwards of $15 billion per year. For a big, super-impressive project like a Mars program, $5 billion per year for ten years is reasonable.

Musk has been counting on this from day one. He knew people would compare the incredibly ambitious ITS plan with the laughable SLS "path to Mars" non-plan, and then the pressure would be on NASA to shutter MSFC and transfer the budget to SpaceX.

Did Michael Bay direct this

>What happens when this thing crashes and kills half a dozen NASA astronauts on the attempted first manned Mars landing?

ever notice how the risk of death is only used as an excuse to shut down scientific progress and never to shut down major financial interests that exploit and kill people every single day...

really makes you think.

your*

normal workers don't take tens of millions of dollars to train like astronauts do, let alone the celebrity/national icon aspect that comes with astronauts

Astronauts don't take tens of millions of dollars to train either. Mostly, they're cargo. NASA spends tens of millions of dollars training an astronaut because it's full of people looking to justify their salaries and to get more subordinates so they can advance their careers.

Remember, when Challenger blew up, they were carrying an elementary school teacher to demonstrate how it could be done by ordinary people.

>Remember, when Challenger blew up, they were carrying an elementary school teacher to demonstrate how it could be done by ordinary people.
and it set the space program back at least a decade, but no SpaceX can kill anyone they want and it won't be a problem because they're immune to the public eye :^)

>and it set the space program back at least a decade
No it didn't. It only stopped the shuttle program for under 3 years, and that was an awful program which set the space program back two or three decades.

The loss of life was only a PR problem, and it didn't demoralize the public or make them less willing to support human spaceflight. The problem it uncovered was that NASA was lying about how reliable the shuttle was. The trouble with the reaction is that the shuttle program spinmeisters managed to get it perceived as, "NASA is a bunch of reckless cowboys" rather than "the shuttle is failure".

When NASA pivoted to the shuttle program, it had Skylab, Saturn V, Saturn IB, the Apollo capsule, and recent experience with Project Gemini (which could put two men in space in a vehicle with docking capability using a rocket with only 3.5 tons to LEO capability, and bring them home again).

Shuttle's lateness resulted in Skylab splashing, and the abandonment of Saturn V meant another couldn't be launched. The shuttle ended up costing more to fly than Saturn V while being less capable than Saturn IB and less safe than any previous manned spacecraft.

This meant that, as long as NASA insisted on flying it, it couldn't significantly advance in human spaceflight. It could only do some of the less impressive things it had already done, for more repetitions over a longer timescale. From 1974 to the present, NASA has done nothing new and interesting in manned spaceflight. The

>No it didn't. It only stopped the shuttle program for under 3 years, and that was an awful program which set the space program back two or three decades.
Stopped reading there. The shuttle was already plagued with problems but the disaster effectively gimped the program permanently. There would be a US-only station and 10+ shuttles flying today if there was never an accident.

eh
If he actually kept shit to schedule, he could self-finance his whole colonization program just off the ITS launching payloads to orbit or the moon