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Don't read too much into this. The way these always work is they pick a low-stakes mission to give a new competitor a chance to build the market. If they're on track to miss the deadline badly they'll switch vendors to SpaceX who they know can pick up the slack on a short timeline. And if they do manage to deliver, great.
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Not crewed. > a spacecraft to house a suite of scientific instruments Second sentence of the article.
They even called their printers "Pylons" if recall (a nod to StarCraft's Protoss). The manufacturing tech has far broader implications than the application they were putting it toward.
My worry is that Eric bought them solely to get launch-for-compute in his pocket. Given his track record of "steal and when you get caught just have the lawyers 'clean all that up'" and "we didn't intend to unleash evil on the world, 'but it happened'" aren't encouraging. I always hope the golden goose doesn't get carved to pieces, but it usually happens.
NASA always needs more competition to keep launch costs low and encouraging innovation and it seems like he hasn't been CEO for a long time. This is indicative of funding competition which is a good thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not crewed. > a spacecraft to house a suite of scientific instruments Second sentence of the article.
Link doesn't fit but the argument stands. No billionaire-funded misison to Mars has ever succeeded. Not even SpaceX. You need at minimum an entire space program. Here's a better link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One
Even your line about "an entire space program" is incoherent in this context because the rocket in question is literally being used as a component in "an entire space program".
This mission is an orbital science mission studying Mars' atmosphere, not the same objective as SpaceX's long-term goal of sending large cargo and eventually humans to Mars. So I think the title might be taking the piss just a smidge.
I don't assume "Mars mission" to necessarily mean cargo for settlement or humans. In fact, that all seems quite distant at this point, so I ignore it entirely unless specific concrete actions occur. So for many people like myself, the title is perfectly reasonable. The world does not revolve around SpaceX and its purported plans.
"NASA picks Eric Schmidt’s rocket company for Mars mission, setting up a race with SpaceX"
That title establishes a context in which looking at their relative goals is completely valid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't assume "Mars mission" to necessarily mean cargo for settlement or humans. In fact, that all seems quite distant at this point, so I ignore it entirely unless specific concrete actions occur. So for many people like myself, the title is perfectly reasonable. The world does not revolve around SpaceX and its purported plans.
By that logic the Russians won the space race pretty completely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Link doesn't fit but the argument stands. No billionaire-funded misison to Mars has ever succeeded. Not even SpaceX. You need at minimum an entire space program. Here's a better link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One
You didn't make an argument. You still haven't. Every new thing goes through a long stage where it hasn't happened yet . You haven't even begun to argue, with evidence, that this thing can't happen. Even your line about "an entire space program" is incoherent in this context because the rocket in question is literally being used as a component in "an entire space program".
Venus Rocket Lab / MIT: Venus Life Finder: Late (Missed original 2023/2025 windows; now targeted for late 2026/2028)
Mars One: Conceptual Failure
Inspiration Mars Foundation: Cancelled
SpaceX: very, very, very late (timeline pushed to 2028+)
Relativity Space: Aeolus <-- you are here
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't assume "Mars mission" to necessarily mean cargo for settlement or humans. In fact, that all seems quite distant at this point, so I ignore it entirely unless specific concrete actions occur. So for many people like myself, the title is perfectly reasonable. The world does not revolve around SpaceX and its purported plans.
To be fair to the original commenter though... the actual title of the TechCrunch article is: "NASA picks Eric Schmidt’s rocket company for Mars mission, setting up a race with SpaceX" That title establishes a context in which looking at their relative goals is completely valid.