NASA's annual revenue is 73% SpaceX's market cap.

But lets pretend that doesn't matter. Musk makes a solid ~1.1 billion a year off of various investments, and has ~11.7 billion in assets. Even if he dumped all that in SpaceX, you'd sill be ~6billion short of NASA's budget. Implying those assests could be quickly liquidated.

Even if we assume SpaceX has more/better talent then NASA. Your still working with at least an order of magnitude lower budget. Which is massive, especially when we are talking about the difference between $1bil/yr and $10 billion/yr

NASA does a lot of things, only some of which are related to any journey to Mars. Of course, they might suddenly drop everything and work towards sending humans.

As an example of a lot of things, New Horizons is coming out of hibernation this Saturday. It sends a periodic "ok" beacon every couple weeks or whatever since launch in the 00s, but its booting up for real this Saturday.

Pluto flyby mid next july...

The estimate in 1996 was ~30 billion for a trip to Mars. SpaceX has been accumulating the needed rocket technologies.

Roughly, the tech needed is:

1. heavy-lift

2. Mars EDL

3. artificial g for the trip and return

4. in-situ fuel production

5. methane rockets

SpaceX has been developing heavy-lift at a profit, so that takes care of #1. They are also working on #5, although I'm not sure off-hand who their customers are. (Methane has volume advantages over LH/LOX that might make it better for smaller missions.)

There are still some other pieces of the pie that need assembled. Rockets are surely a part of #2, but Musk is essentially building a company that will sell him a trip to Mars.

The advantage of methane is that it can be produced natively out of the martian atmosphere. Heat + Metal Catalyst + C02 + H2 = Methane + O2

Also hydrogen + O2 = water. So basically you ship the astronauts with nothing but hydrogen and live off the land. Or this is what the Mars Society was calling for.

89% (by mass) of hydrogen/oxygen fuel can also be produced from Martian atmosphere, since Oxygen has an atomic mass 16 times that of hydrogen. I think Methane has advantages other than a slightly larger portion producible from Martian air.

Yes, any launch from Mars is very likely to be methane.

I was just trying to figure out how SpaceX could fund its development of methane rockets before that, through domestic use of methane rockets.

I'm doubtful that such a mission could be organized privately, just because there isn't any money in it. When humans eventually get to Mars, they might be riding a SpaceX rocket, but the mission will almost certainly be planned and funded by NASA or some other national space agency.

Except that I'm pretty sure Elon's life goal is to make an impact on humanity, not die with a ton of money. He's repeatedly shown that he's willing to go all in to change the world.

That may be his goal, but even all of his money is orders of magnitude less than what it would take for either a small colony or a manned mission with return. See sibling post about NASA annual budget, relatively small though it is, still blowing away SpaceX's market cap and Elon's personal wealth.

Elon also hasn't just blown money senselessly on longshots or unsustainable one-offs, like a private Mars mission would be. SpaceX and Tesla both have some innovative concepts and have advanced their respective fields, but both are also perfectly ordinary businesses in most regards, with very reasonable plans for revenue. I don't see any potential for revenue in travelling to Mars.

If SpaceX's approach shows promise I'd expect NASA's program to evolve to integrate it somewhat. SpaceX might become the launch vehicle for the unmanned portions, for example.

SpaceX's approach is to reuse well understood technology but do it mostly in house instead of farming everything out. The are innovating on process and cost but nothing else (at the moment).

Those are two areas where NASA certainly could learn something.

I really don't think you can claim they're not innovating when they've already propulsively test-landed (in the sea, but successfully) two Falcon first stages.

They've done those landings (as tests) on land with the Grasshopper as well. The videos are super cool.

NASA has propulsively landed many things (on other planets!). The fundamentals have been around for a while.

What I'm trying to get at is that SpaceX is currently not the go to place for rocket science. I do think they are making mark in rocket building science which is exactly what we pay them to do.