Elon is slightly crazy as most billionaires are, he's just crazy in a very specific direction: some people buy mega yachts, he wants a SpaceX rocket to be landing humans on Mars.
Now in reality...SpaceX can't privately fund a manned mission anywhere. That's got to be a NASA/international thing - if only because the core competencies are so incredibly broad-ranging (SpaceX do rockets - and rockets are already a "here's 50 fields you can contribute a Ph.D to, we need all of them to make this work"). But if your goal is to go to Mars, then you talk about, and build towards, going to Mars and wait for NASA to say "hey we'd like to get the moonbase going".
Which is pretty much what has happened: I have no doubt that in the next 20 years we're going to see a manned mission to the Moon, and I'm very sure that it's going to be a Starship that takes it there.
I'll bet you 100 MoonBaseCoins that China beats Musk to a manned moon landing.
China might land some small lander before StarShip arrives - but with reuse and huge capacity StarShip is an excellent cargo vehicle.
I've always wondered about this WRT "black budgets" and the theories about Breakaway Civilizations; "Of what value does 'Money' have in Space?"
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Lets assume that trillions are funnelled off into black budgets for [purposes] -- that assumes that hte 'money' (fiat currency (paper/the-concept-of-value/10101010s/etc)) is being used to pay for/buy [goods/services] -- Where the hell is all this money going? is there an economy and a place where such vast amounts are being spent.
Lets assume they are paying their engineers/suppliers/companies/etc - the Deep Workers far beyond the depths of SkunkWorks etc - where exactly is that money going? What are they buying.
This has been the biggest flaw for me in thinking about Breakaway Civs - and spending money/making money in Space.
If we were to assume that the moon had some set of valuable minerals/etc that would be beneficial to mine and then return to earth, where is the value in mining Tungsten on the Moon (given your shipping calc, for example) and bringing that back to earth unless the earth had none of said resource...
Personally, it would be interesting to think about how a production capability could be built on the moon to support the fabrication and manufacture of vessels on a lunar-orbitting ship-dock, which then could carry on to mars/wherever... and pull from the resources of metals on the moon, which AFAIK is supposed to have a lot of metal...
Further, why has Musk constantly talked about "going to Mars", but said seemingly very little about doing a dry-run, proto, etc to the Moon first?
Shouldnt building a Moon-base be much more immediately important than a Bezos-esque trip to Mars?
FFS SpaceX is talking about getting to Mars, but all the required life support eco-system requirements do not appear to have been even addressed?
It all feels amiss... Please enlighten me.