[imtringued]

One thing I don't understand about Musk and his Mars obsession is that he has had a rocket that can launch stuff to Mars for years now and he didn't even bother with the tiniest pilot project just for PR purposes. He is not sending rovers, satellites or living plants on a journey to Mars.

Even if by some miracle Starship carries people to Mars, there won't be anything for them to do there. They'll be stuck in their Starship and that would be the end of that mission, since there isn't even a plan to return.

[cubefox]

Starship (the upper stage) can launch from Mars and bring humans back to Earth. The problem is that they need a lot of propellant to do this, and they can't bring that much from Earth. Their current plan is to generate it on Mars, which requires complex infrastructure built by unmanned missions. A simpler approach could be developing a smaller ascent vehicle:

https://spacenews.com/how-carrying-enough-water-to-make-retu...

https://spacenews.com/crewed-mars-missions-will-require-a-ne...

But I'm sure that approach also has drawbacks.

[oceanplexian]

When humans get to Mars the infrastructure will already be there waiting for them. The plan is to send unmanned Starships to Mars basically as soon as it's flight proven.