Dragon was always only temporary program so SpaceX could get the experience with the technology of human space flight and specifically deep space flight Dragon from the start was designed to go outside earth’s orbit. Musk plans to go to Mars the whole.existence of SpaceX is for that purpose everything else is secondary. There was plans to send Dragons as far as Mars itself. the original Dragon had retro propulsive landing capabilities no parachutes needed it could set itself down to a zero zero landing in earth’s gravity well which means the moon at 1/6 G and Mars with less than 3/4 G is easy peasy. Falcon Heavy was designed to allow a three launch mission with two heavy sending up tankers to fuel Red Dragon and land over a tonne of payload on the surface of Mars with Dragon itself not being part of that payload. The plan was a sample return mission using as boost back Mars return vehicle launched through the docking port of.Dragon. This man thinks big. Dragon is the ONLY human rates spacecraft that had the technology and more importantly the legs via falcon heavy to leave earth’s gravity well and return no other current space vehicle has that capability. The Ares fiasco aka corporate welfare make work jobs pork project is just that a giant boondoggle to keep senators lobbyists happy it will never touch SpaceX in efficiency,reusability,or cost. Falcon Heavy is ten times cheaper per lb than the billion and a half per shot SLS fiasco. Starship is being crippled by the EPA and FAA at the whim of the admin who hates Musk and all the senators who will lose SLS money when starship fly 100+ tonnes to orbit for one tenth as much as SLS. Musk needs to find another country to build it in Mexico perhaps he is already building two ocean rig based launch platforms to.launch.from international.waters so he can tell the FAA to.stuff it.
I have more confidence in Musk’s ability to map out and implement a development plan than I do of NASA.
They’ll be too busy working on woke climate BS anyway.
“Musk needs to find another country to build it”
Agreed—the US is a hostile regulatory environment these days.
Musk needs to fully decouple from NASA in every detail—then the good stuff can start to happen.
No more waiting on NASA’s billion dollar space suits:
https://qz.com/2046840/a-1-billion-space-suit-is-holding-up-nasas-2024-moon-landing/
you are not telling me anything i dont already know about. starship will fly into orbit, the FAA has been pissed at spacex for a while now. and they keep pushing back the release of the environmental report.