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Princess--Azula t1_ivnswuv wrote

The boring answer is, that he's yet to prove his rocket ship can wriggle itself out of the atmosphere. If this will be successful, he could theoretically fill his spaceship with consumables and send one over there. He would probably die, but technologically, he could send one there after his orbital launch success.

But realistically, he will add more middle steps after the first orbital launch, which will not exactly be a real stable space orbit thingy- the first real stable-orbit orbital flight, the first ship-to-ship fuel transfer will definitely be things that are going to happen before.

Launch permits seems to be a significant contributor to delays (Although boring, I still think they tend to make sense and are grounded on good reasoning EXEPT the "SLS before Starship" thing, if this is proven to be true)

I think the 30s - 40s (weird to write that) will be more realistic.

You have to take into account, that there will be challenges, that are entirely unknown to us as of now - Things will break and improve, plans altered and so on.

But I'm honestly less concerned about the technological aspect of things and more concerned about the lack of interest in a serious discussion about the subject of cosmic rays. Of course it's boring to bring up something that slows things down. But what benefit does it give humanity if the only thing we achieve is giving astronuts cancer??

We need a "deflector/energy shield technology" of some sort. Look what's swirling around there. Water around a safe room is one suggestion. Some type of armor is another. And scientists research a deflector shield that creates a strong magnetic field around a space craft or astronaut.. Then again, (electro)magnetic fields create radiation exposure themselves. Much worse is that living on Mars itself does not protect you from this type of radiation. So, you can't even brush the exposure off as something happening temporally on the trip to Mars and nowhere else.

So many things to consider only for this tiny detail. And already here, Musk has yet to show true understanding of the severity of the problem. Unless he wants to irradiate astronauts until they all mutate to be resistant to cosmic radiation.

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