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That's about entirely backwards. Flinging a metal tube off of Earth is much harder than keeping a few apes alive in a can. The tolerances and requirements in rocketry are much more severe, the dimensions unfortunately super-human scale, and the ability to test the system limited by the scale, expense, and speed of the final product, not to mention the usually-100% chance of destroying your machine in the process. (Even reusable systems, which are rare, are expensive to run simply due to scale.) The actual spacecraft part is easy in comparison. It's of reasonable dimension, you can test and fiddle with it on the ground, and plenty of common practice is available due to submarines and high-altitude aircraft as well as decades of continuous operation in space. The history of manned space systems will present plenty of examples of the booster being the pacing element. But we don't have to look much further than the very system we're talking about here. Orion is ready and flying a projected 4 years (and probably longer in reality) before its booster. And that's not because they got a head start. That's not to say that rockets and manned space craft are similar problem domains; they're not. Any expertise SpaceX will need in that area will have to be developed separately. But the techniques are well known (thanks largely to NASA, who make no secret of it) and are just plain not that hard. They're already flying a pressurized and temperature-controlled Dragon (which spends time as part of the ISS), and are in development of a crewed one. It is true that SpaceX has yet to operate any space stations, which NASA has, and which are the closest analogues we have to an interplanetary spacecraft. But again, ISS systems are a known quantity, and SpaceX could easily replicate them. Or, if they don't want to bother, could contract with Bigelow, who is currently flying two (unmanned) pressurized space stations, with designs for manned versions ready to go and awaiting a way to get there. SpaceX and Bigelow have already announced plans to partner for orbital station operations. A Dragon and a Bigelow station would provide a nice ride to Mars. Getting to the surface and back would be a bit of a problem, but a SpaceX/Bigelow team could possibly land on Phobos and return in the next 5 years. And on a darn low budget, too. If you want to walk on Mars without too much tech development, Dragon 2 should be able to land just as it does on Earth. Dunno how you'd get back up, though. Maybe you could land a Falcon-ish booster loaded with a storable oxidizer (like peroxide) on little enough juice that it could get back into orbit. Haven't looked into the numbers there; F9-1 is certainly single stage to orbit on Mars, but down-and-up on the same fuel load seems unlikely. It'd certainly work with ISRU propellants, but that's a nice can of worms. |