SpaceX will attempt to reach Mars by the end of 2026
msn.comWelcome to Elmo-land where a mission:
with a spacecraft that has never been orbited
that will need to be refueled in-orbit, which has never been done
"crewed" by autonomous robots which have only been demoed with remote operation
is "50/50" for happening within 11 months
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight
If it were not for all the geoplitics, the one place where Musk is still reasonably impressive is SpaceX. Yes, still late and pricy, but much less so than everyone else.
No orbit? Aye, but that's deliberate until reusability is sorted. No reusability of the second stage, that's a big killer for a lot of this.
In orbit refueling, I agree with you.
Crew… you're correct, but also it won't matter much. Landing on Mars has to be autopilot (and not in the Tesla sense) anyway, the robots won't be flipping switches. When (or if) they're on Mars, very slow very laggy remote with minimal autonomy is the current state of the art for all the rovers.
But the geopolitics… I mean, at this point I put 25% on NATO ending, 10% on Musk personally getting enough sanctions to end Tesla, 7% on enough financial contagion that SpaceX gets nationalised. The Trump admin is more interested in the moon than in mars.
Not high odds, but enough to materially reduce a 50/50 even if those odds were correct.
I guess he needs this kind of ridiculous optimism to keep him going.