[nicktelford]

I suspect the ambitious timelines are political. Musk has repeatedly stated that others would need to work on a lot of the Mars colony infrastructure. SpaceX only appear to be working on the supporting infrastructure for flights (e.g. propellant plant).

By telling the world that they'll be ready to fly in five years, they're making a statement that other organisations/companies that want to get involved with this effort need to start working on developing the other parts right now.

If the schedule ends up being more like 2028 for the first flight, they stand a much better chance at flying the right stuff there.

[TeMPOraL]

That's a good point. This talk sends a pretty clear message to the market - we expect to be flying serious amounts of stuff to Mars in under 10 years, so if you want to start a business in the area, now is a good time.

And the trick is, the more people he can convince of that, the better chances we have the Mars colony will happen.

[nicktelford]

It's worth remembering too that Bigelow Aerospace put their development on hold some years ago because the launch industry wasn't moving fast enough to actually deploy their habitats.

I expect we'll see them spinning back up on the immediate future. :)

[nickik]

He makes aggressive time lines in everything, I don't think this is any special. The same happens for all other products across Tesla and SpaceX.