“It would certainly be nice if one or more of the probes planned for Mars surface ops in the next 10 years definitively settles the “Is there indigenous life on Mars or not?” question.”

Yes it sure would.

“But that doesn’t seem to be a red-hot priority for some reason.”

Just a guess, but probably because the whole manned flight to Mars circus comes to a screeching halt at any time organisms are found there.

Such a discovery sure would bring an abrupt end to SLS, providing there is not a piece of space junk headed our way… in which case space priorities change rapidly.

“It’s also at least possible that the Martian surface environment has already been contaminated with Earth microbes from insufficiently sterilized probe hardware of 1970′s vintage.”

That does not really matter, except for the effect on the task of determining whether there is life on Mars.

“I don’t think that fairly obvious truth is likely to impede any actual missions, particularly not privately funded ones.”

In that contaminating Mars is not the problem…

“I don’t think anyone but whacko Greenies is going to favor granting them another four decades in which to muck about desultorily on the life-or-no-life question. I know I’m not.”

Uh yeah, whacko Greenies and a whole lot of other people are not likely to risk Earth’s biosphere for a few peoples’ intense desires.

If Musk wants to go, he’s going to have to figure out how to clear this hurdle. Or plan on going one way.

Of course, with low cost launch, different ways of clearing the back-contamination hurdle become feasible…

Nor why he did not know of the problems with stand alone solids.

Not sure what you are referring to here.

But then they make up a lot of history about Griffin, presenting their guesses as facts.

Again, not sure what you’re referring to here. The broad outlines of Griffin’s tenure as NASA Administrator are fairly clear in any event. Constellation was entirely his idea. It was big. It was dumb. It cratered big-time. He’s gone from NASA and now has to content himself running some little crumb-chasing consulting outfit in Huntsville. Not a lot else need be said as far as I’m concerned.

Musk saw an opening in the launch market, and used his money, but then “got help”.

Musk got a payload into orbit on his own dime. That separated him pretty thoroughly from the long line of previous commercial space entrepreneurs who crashed and burned without ever reaching space. It also convinced NASA he was legit enough to approach about doing something more ambitious for them they didn’t have sufficient funds to pursue in the old ways with the usual contractors. The “help” wasn’t a handout, he was expected to produce. He did.

He also saw an opening in electric cars, and now sees one in AI.

The electric car thing seems to be working out too. At least the government didn’t waste whatever it laid on Tesla like it did on Solyndra, Fisker and a depressingly long list of others. As for AI, the only thing I’ve seen Elon say about that is that it scares him.

It’s also at least possible that the Martian surface environment has already been contaminated with Earth microbes from insufficiently sterilized probe hardware of 1970’s vintage. NASA’s standards of cleanliness were apparently a bit less rigorous then than now. I know there was some surviving biological stuff on the pieces of the Surveyor brought back from the Moon by one of the Apollo missions.

The first boots-on-the-ground human mission to Mars will result in contamination. Period. It simply isn’t possible to hermetically seal humans away from a planetary environment upon which they intend to build and live, or even just visit.

I don’t think that fairly obvious truth is likely to impede any actual missions, particularly not privately funded ones. The scientists have had 40 years to do with a supposedly pristine Martian environment whatever they had it in mind to do. I don’t think anyone but whacko Greenies is going to favor granting them another four decades in which to muck about desultorily on the life-or-no-life question. I know I’m not.

The other was the price – higher than Ariane 5?!?

Strangely the potential buyers said no.

And by the way the world is flat – as we all know – so technically you might even assume that by bringing the SLS to the edge of the world and by just pushing it over, well, the SLS might even make it to the Moon by gravity alone.