Elon Musk's Plans for the Moon
Prediction: SpaceX will beat everyone, including NASA, back to the Moon.
by Rod D. Martin
August 26, 2021
ScienceAlert.com reports this morning that SpaceX Now Claims They Might Return Humans to The Moon Even Before 2024.
Jeff Bezos pitched a hissy fit when Elon Musk won the competition to build America’s next lunar lander, at a fraction of the price and radically more payload. He actually sued the government.
He won’t win. But even if he does, that won’t stop SpaceX from doing anything at all.
Knowing Elon, he's likely to go to the Moon on his own, without NASA, without NASA's money, and without the entire stupid useless Artemis program. Just to show his (and his technology's) absolute superiority. Dominance.
It's absolutely what I'd do.
And if you stop and think about it for a second, why on God's Earth are we (the United States) wasting a single dollar on NASA/Boeing/Lockheed's idiotic Artemis -- $2 Billion per launch to carry four people to the Moon -- just so Elon's $2 Million per launch Starship can ferry them down to the surface, in a rocket that can carry up to 100 or more people (depending on configuration) and vast quantities of equipment?
It’s moronic, the very definition of pork on a truly astronomical scale.
And why is anyone taking Bezos seriously anyway, when he's never put a single rocket into orbit, and is four years late producing even one single rocket engine for Boeing?
(Yes: Boeing and Lockheed no longer have the ability to build rocket engines. They were dependent on the Russians for years before they turned to the incompetent Blue Origin.)
Note also that SpaceX now has the best safety and success records in the world with their Falcon 9, and actually launched more tonnage into space in 2020 than all of their competitors (including state competitors) combined.
Yes, if I were betting, I'd predict that Elon does the whole thing -- Earth surface to Lunar surface and back -- on his own dime before NASA, just to show how incomparably superior he and his tech truly are. And that won't even be hard: it just depends on how willing he is to hack off the United States government.
Judging by his tweets to the SEC, I'm guesstimating his willingness level as "high".
-- Elon Musk's Plans for the Moon originally appeared as a Facebook post by Rod D. Martin.