Zubrin Talks About Getting to Mars by 2030

Elon Musk proved the problem with space was not technological but institutional. SpaceX is able to proceed at three times the speed and ten times lower cost by pushing ahead rapidly with a willingness and expectation that they will try, fail, fix what went wrong and try again. The first Falcon 1 had three failures before they succeeded. The Falcon 9 reusable booster had 5 failures before they succeeded. The Starship had five failures before they flew to 10,000 feet and landed safely.

The belief that there are institutional problems and not technological problems is why there are many nuclear fusion startups getting large amounts of funding to try to rapidly develop nuclear fusion.

SpaceX Starship is not just a rocket but it is a Spaceyard. They are making rockets at one a month and will soon be making two per week.

Orbital SpaceX Starship working by 2024 will mean a Saturn V rocket capacity at 1% of the cost. The 2024 administration will see that the NASA budget leveraging Orbital SpaceX Starship could have a manned landing by 2028.

Zubrin does not discuss that deploying 30,000 Generation 2 Starlink satellites deployed from 2024-2026 would enable Starlink to have 150-400 billion in annual revenue. This would give SpaceX two to four times NASA budget in profit.