That was an eye-opening article. I'm forwarding it to my aspiring astronaut friends (who are currently restricted to exploring outer space with psychedelics).
I had no idea that things had progressed that much.
The economics are insane:
Starship is intended to reach numbers as low as $1m/T and 1000 T/year for cargo soft landed on the Moon. Apollo achieved about $2b/T and 2 T/year for cargo soft landed on the Moon. Constellation 2.0 as described above would be more like $4b/T and 2 T/year.
The race is on between our reaching the stars (or at least Mars) and our civilization imploding and keeping us firmly anchored to this wet rock for another thousand years or so.
It's probably going to be a photo finish, and makes me wonder if all species that leave their respective planets go through a similar developmental phase where we/they risk collapse thanks to what it takes to evolve far enough technologically and culturally to be able to leave a planet.
Cultural and political evolution might play a role as well since it's going to be harder to colonize Mars if we're still fighting over stupid shit here on Earth, and if we make space cheap and easy without evolving culturally and politically then we risk warfare in low-Earth orbit (or on the Moon), if not exactly "Star" wars.
