On 2020-03-07 3:45 PM, Alain Fournier wrote:
A Flags and footprints mission by SpaceX (Or Blue Origin or if someone
else wants to step to the plate it's fine with me.) would also make
SpaceXs plans to colonise Mars look much more real. That would probably
help convince others like for instance
https://cropbox.co
that they could make a buck by adapting their technology for a Mars
mission. I think that SpaceX will likely soon have rocket technology
sufficient to colonise Mars. But there is much more to colonisation than
to build the transport vehicle.

Agreed. And the US government could be assisting these efforts instead
of building a useless rocket.

Imagine a world where the government is providing funding to explore
having companies such as CropBox build food production technology for
long term space missions.

It's not the way we do it with today's NASA, esp. the way Congress
treats it. The way NASA is assigned priorities must change or it will
lose all relevance when it comes to human space flight, exploration and
expansion. To some degree this will be natural and inevitable. NIST for
example doesn't spend almost all of its budget and time on research and
development of laboratory steam engines and steam powered locomotives
these days. I'd just like to try to keep NASA relevant in the 21st century.

Dave