{"id":1222,"date":"2026-06-13T02:26:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T02:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2026-06-13T02:26:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T02:26:22","slug":"dreams-of-the-future-world-musks-dreams-your-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/dreams-of-the-future-world-musks-dreams-your-money\/","title":{"rendered":"DREAMS OF THE FUTURE WORLD-MUSK’S DREAMS YOUR MONEY!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Science fiction? Musk’s lofty SpaceX goals unrealistic, skeptics say<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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SpaceX has placed a big bet on the success of its newest rocket, Starship, but it is still under development (TIMOTHY A. CLARY)<\/span> (TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP\/AFP)<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made awe-inspiring achievements since its founding over two decades ago and has big ideas — colonies on Mars, orbital AI data centers, rapidly reusable rockets — for the future.<\/p>\n

But as SpaceX makes its record-breaking public market debut, some experts express doubts it can reach its lofty goals, especially on its planned timeline.<\/p>\n

“We achieve what others think is really the impossible, and we make that possible,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in a recent video.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the company’s development of a partially reusable rocket — which has allowed it to conduct more launches than all other providers combined — was once thought unattainable.<\/p>\n

“SpaceX has accomplished a great deal, that’s quite real,” Robert Zubrin, an engineer and president of the Mars Society, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“On the other hand, Musk frequently makes claims that are not real,” he said, citing deadlines that are regularly pushed back.<\/p>\n

– Fairytale timelines –<\/p>\n

While many experts believe they will see SpaceX send humans to Mars in their lifetime, the prospect of a mass inhabited colony will take much, much longer — if ever.<\/p>\n

“The simple answer is that I don’t see this as realistic at all,” said Christian Bach, head of the space transportation division at Germany’s Technical University of Dresden and co-author of a critical analysis of Musk’s Mars plans.<\/p>\n

He said that even just settling a handful of people on the Red Planet is unlikely this century due to unsolved technological and biological challenges.<\/p>\n

To make the roundtrip journey to Mars, which takes about three years, Musk and Spacex are counting on their newest rocket under development: Starship.<\/p>\n

However, perfecting launches with Starship will not be enough, warns Scott Hubbard, a former senior NASA official. Astronauts will also need new life-sustaining systems, such as oxygen and water recyclers.<\/p>\n

“They like to portray it that they can do it on their own, they cannot,” said Hubbard.<\/p>\n

He believes NASA — which is planning future missions to explore Mars but not to colonize it — will have to join the project for it to become a reality.<\/p>\n

SpaceX also faces a major hurdle, Hubbard noted, over its goal of refuelling rockets in-orbit.<\/p>\n

The idea would be to launch several rockets, one carrying crew or cargo, and the others carrying tanks of liquid oxygen and liquid methane that would be offloaded through coupling.<\/p>\n

That capability “is something that is absolutely crucial to their plans that has never been done before,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They have extraordinarily good engineers…so they will solve the problem, the thing is the schedule,” he added.<\/p>\n

– New-age Napoleon? –<\/p>\n

SpaceX has other major projects on its plate — including building a modified Starship to use as a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program, and developing a new satellite constellation to serve as orbital AI data centers.<\/p>\n

While the idea of moving energy-intensive AI data centers off-Earth may sound appealing, most experts remain skeptical.<\/p>\n

“If you do conquer all the technical hurdles, there’s still the economic aspect, and it’s just not financially reasonable at this point in time,” Kathleen Curlee, a space analyst at Georgetown University, told AFP.<\/p>\n

Zubrin was more blunt: “This AI data centers in space thing is fiction,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If you owned a company that could build ocean ships better than anyone else, you would say the place to do AI is in the middle of the ocean,” he quipped.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the unprecedented influx of cash from SpaceX’s IPO, the company will nonetheless have plenty of resources to devote to the project and others.<\/p>\n

While flying high for the moment, SpaceX could still face unexpected turbulence — as evidenced by competitor Blue Origin’s recent launchpad mega-explosion.<\/p>\n

Zubrin linked Musk’s potential for failure to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s calamitous campaign in Russia.<\/p>\n

If he were to fail, Zubrin said, it’d be because “he had succeeded in everything he had done before, and so no one could tell him that he was wrong.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science fiction? Musk’s lofty SpaceX goals unrealistic, skeptics say SpaceX has placed a big bet on the success of its newest rocket, Starship, but it is still under development (TIMOTHY A. CLARY) (TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP\/AFP) Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made awe-inspiring achievements since its founding over two decades ago and has big ideas — colonies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-billionaires-in-the-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1223,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions\/1223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}