Anyone else find this thread a bit premature?
There's only one correct answer to the question. The first person to step foot on Mars needs to be....Elon Musk. Who else will have put more time, more money, or more effort into getting there? Who is most responsible for getting there? Who deserves the honor more?I have no issue at all with collecting a few billion USD from a couple of passengers to be among the first crew on Mars. After all, how many people do you believe are going to be on the first flight? Three? Five? A dozen? I'm leaning more towards the latter, and they certainly won't need to all be "steely-eyed missile men".
Quote from: JWarner on 12/16/2021 04:04 pmI fully expect NASA's contract for the Mars passenger trip to require that the NASA astronauts be first on the surface.No such contract exists, and going to Mars is a SpaceX funded effort, so while the U.S. Government could offer to pay to send people, it would be up to SpaceX as to whether they wanted to do that.QuoteI expect Elon will be totally in agreement as well.SpaceX exists because Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, so Elon Musk will do what is best for the Mars colonization effort.As to what that is, we already know that Elon Musk is OK with taking money from billionaires to do space stunts, and Musk has said that colonizing Mars will take a LOT of money - more than he will ever have. So it would not be unthinkable that someone would pay a LARGE sum to be the first.However I do like the idea of the captain of the ship being first...
I fully expect NASA's contract for the Mars passenger trip to require that the NASA astronauts be first on the surface.
I expect Elon will be totally in agreement as well.