The article is pretty light on details. But it was clear that their previous plan to return the samples by 2040 for $11 billion wouldn't get funded. Doing it faster for less money will require some out-of-the-box thinking.
Commercial options to get to earth orbit have been booming ever since SpaceX proved it viable on a startup budget, and commercial resupply of the ISS is an incredible success. Commercial options for delivery to the moon are emerging. Commissioning a commercial provider with delivering the lander to Mars seems like the best long-term option. But it's not immediately obvious if it's the best option from the viewpoint of this single mission. Mars landings are really tricky, and NASA has by far the best track record nailing them.
> Commercial options to get to earth orbit have been booming
The pipeline is full. But SpaceX maintains an effective planetary hegemony on LEO.
> SpaceX proved it viable on a startup budget
This is like saying Einstein proved it viable to discover groundbreaking physics as a patent clerk.
Before SpaceX we had Virgin Orbit and Blue Origin, two well-funded ventures that were burning money going nowhere, and a bunch of old big defense companies building rockets derived from ICBMs.
After SpaceX we have Rocket Lab running a successful smallsat launch service with their Electron rocket, with ambitions for more; Astra making rockets that fit in standard shipping containers (to great interest of military customers); Firefly trying to break into the market of medium lift vehicles and lunar landers; Relativity Space trying to make better rockets with extensive 3d printing; and Stoke Space trying to make medium lift rockets with some whacky engine configurations. And that's just the US, lots of exciting movement in Europe, India and China too. Also let's not forgetting Blue Origin is about to finally launch their first orbital rocket, a design that's clearly inspired by Falcon 9.
Sure, maybe of the above only SpaceX and RocketLab can already be called successful launch providers, and SpaceX is like 90% of the US launch market. But even if all the others end up failing, going from old defense companies and failing billionaire's toys to old defense companies, SpaceX, RocketLab and Blue Origin is a massive step up that likely wouldn't have happened without SpaceX
I have recently been reading up on Apollo program, and more on the logistical and bureaucratic side. I am convinced the technical achievements have peaked around that time. Apollo was mind boggling complex, and at the time unknown territory. But one of the few reasons it worked was the work culture - pride of what you were doing and being well compensated - and new growing organization free of political appointees and middle-management corporate freeloaders.
NASA in those days was razor sharp (not to downplay current achievements of NASA)
There are few reasons spaceX will not reach moon, and mars is even more laughable. Starship prime and only reason is to make starlink financially viable. Its a cargo-bus to LEO. Musk is using taxpayers money under false pretense of going to the moon.
> There are few reasons spaceX will not reach moon
They literally launched two private moon landers last week.
They should just choose RocketLab: https://x.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1876834824100401519
Sling a "Mothership" out there, undock the lander from mothership, land it, eject a couple flying drones to pick up the samples and pack them in the "mars-to-mothership-craft". Launch "mars-to-mothership-craft", dock with Mothership, return to Earth.
<sarcasm>How hard could it be?</sarcasm>
Wait a few years and NASA will probably just be able to order some from the SpaceX online store.
Honestly, I think this is the most likely scenario. Congress doesn't have the stomach for long-term planning; one only has to look at Constellation/Artemis/SLS for an example.
Most of congress seems more interested in preserving jobs at Boeing, Lockheed, Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman.
Commercial Resupply and Commercial Crew are among the best things to happen to NASA: NASA can request funds for two competitors, everybody imagines the money will go to their favorite, and then the actual proposals and performance can decide who gets the money.
I said it kind of tongue-in-cheek but I think it would be wasteful and duplicative to do much robotic science on Mars since SpaceX is trying really hard to get there and could be paid a little on the side to return some samples. Undoubtedly they’ll send robots to Mars before they send humans.
There is a fair possibility this becomes true! Elon Musk wants hundreds of starships to visit Mars on a regular schedule. Beating him to the punch by a few years would result in a Pyrrhic mission for JPL.
With the current Starship that seems unlikely to be viable. But with iterative improvements similar to those between the first Falcon 9 and the Falcon 9 flying today it might be.
I could see SpaceX sending one or two Starships every launch window (so every two years) by 2035, and human landings by 2050. Around that time you would start massive cargo deliveries for a colony, provided SpaceX can get the funds for that somehow (presumably that's what Starlink tries to do).
That timeline is still ambitious, but I believe Musk is genuine when he says he does SpaceX mostly to drive Mars exploration. And time for him will eventually run out. He doesn't have another 50 years.
> could see SpaceX sending one or two Starships every launch window (so every two years) by 2035
I could see this by the 2026 window. Unmanned, granted, but there is a lot we need to learn about Mars, and Starship upgrades us from a horse to a train. (I’d also move up human landings to the 2030s. This is hard, but not unfathomably hard.)
Where I think you’re off is colonisation in the 2050s. City on Mars is a good summary, but in short, we have a lot of problems to solve before permanent settlement (versus a permanent base with a rotating crew à la the ISS) is in reach. (For starters, we have zero trauma medicine for low gravity, we don’t know how to build closed-loop environmental systems, the Martian surface is essentially a planetwide superfund site, et cetera.)
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At some point SpaceX could just drop an automated lab there and do analysis in situ.
It's ridiculous that we landed people on the moon in 1969 and we still haven't even got a plan for bringing a rock back from Mars.
We do have a plan, but it was going to cost ~$10 billion and NASA is exploring cheaper options now. $10 billion is more than an order of magnitude less than it cost to land on the moon, but our societal priorities are (apparently) different now.
Yes these days all that public money gets spent on infrastructure, housing, welfare... Oh, wait
You are right about welfare. Less on infrastructure and housing.
in 2024, the US Fed collected 4.9 Trillion in taxes and spent 3.8 trillion (78% of revenue) on the following programs: Social security, Medicare, health, and income payments like disability.
It also had 1.8 Trillion dollars of deficit spending, bringing the total to 6.7 trillion with welfare taking up (57% of total spending). The fed spent 0.9 trillion (13%) paying interest.
Education and Infrastructure (e.g. transportation) are 3% and 2% of spending, respectively.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...