2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century. They work fast...
Everything you're saying is true. I think that SpaceX will naturally have to reorganize their entire organization to optimize around reuse eventually anyway and I think that means that they will try to eliminate fixed costs where they have the luxury to even if they lose some of their vertical integration. That should be on the table at least.
Unfortunately you cannot get around this by doing more tanker flights. The ratio Mars/tanker is fixed at betwen 3-1 and 4-1.
My reasoning is that the ratio between tank flights and flights to Mars is fixed. 3 to 4 tanker launches are needed for one flight to Mars.
Quote from: AncientU on 05/30/2016 11:55 am2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century. They work fast...That is slow. Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)
Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.
Quote from: Jim on 05/31/2016 04:30 pmQuote from: AncientU on 05/30/2016 11:55 am2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century. They work fast...That is slow. Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)It is slow! For sure. But everything is slower these days and SpaceX doesn't have a significant fraction of GDP at its disposal, this is (a lot closer to) self funded.
Sure. A partnership of organizations using expendables could do something, and something significant, for public expenditure levels of 50% of Apollo, with some clear headed thinking about how to spend that budget thoughtfully and efficiently.
But I suspect that Musk can and will do it for less, and that it will be a larger footprint (in the sense of tonnes landed and infrastructure built). But that's my ideology talking, I freely admit.
Blackstar would no doubt say exactly the opposite.
Quote from: AncientU on 05/31/2016 05:22 pmRelative to NASA today, it is light speed.Still wrong. Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.
Quote from: Jim on 05/31/2016 05:57 pmQuote from: AncientU on 05/31/2016 05:22 pmRelative to NASA today, it is light speed.Still wrong. Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.They may be able to do things quickly, but do they actually do things quickly (or allowed to)? Not quite the same thing - example would be useful.