The problem I see is these folks have no real experience in space outside launching a couple of rockets and landing a couple of times. They do not have the right stuff NASA showed us in the 60s when the US space program was in its infancy.
Where is the astronaut training program and lunar landings that should be done before attempting a 9 month 1 way journey.
I guess we’d better hope SpaceX does well, if only for resupply missions to the ISS. I had missed that Russia lost another Progress mission, the most recent a supply mission to the ISS, the 1st of this month.
http://spacenews.com/progress-launch-to-space-station-fails/
To be fair, has ANYONE else besides SpaceX successfully done a powered landing of a booster that took a payload to orbit? I thought the 4 landings they did at sea earlier this year (plus one on land in Dec. of 2015) were fairly impressive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZXu_rYF51M
(At least one is planned for re-use shortly.)
I’d also point out that SpaceX now has made 26(!) successful launches, with 2 failures. Their ability to keep costs down has already been quite impressive. If they can get their “reusable” tech costs down anywhere near their stated goals, a Mars program becomes significantly more feasible (though still a daunting goal).
Musk is a hard charger — maybe he can pull it off. Even if I think Musk is a little loopy about climate issues, the SpaceX story, failures and all, is definitely one I can respect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
Getting back to landings, and doing a little thinking out of the box, I suspect practice landings on the Moon are not necessary. In fact, they might be “too easy” compared to correctly structured “practice” on Earth. Then SpaceX will surely have several unmanned missions to Mars preceding a manned mission.
I do agree about astronaut training for a Mars mission. However... I would think that’d be a primary area for cooperation with NASA. NASA would surely not jump on the astronaut training (for a Mars mission) until SpaceX had successfully landed at least a couple unmanned landers on Mars. So, I would not expect astronaut training to begin until 2020 at the very soonest, with perhaps a mission in the first good launch window after 2026, at the earliest.
I always hoped Man would make it to Mars in my lifetime — in the ‘70’s, I was sure it would happen. Now, I know both I, and the effort to get there, will have to be on the lucky side of things for sure...