Roboramma responds:
Again, this entire response is misdirected because AUP wasn't talking about a rocket failing, he was talking about the colony failing.
Thanks for bringing this up again, I should have responded to your post.
You are right that my response was incomplete. Yes, I only mentioned the ways that the rocket to Mars could be iterated upon before putting humans at risk, hopefully giving us a reasonably safe and reliable means of getting humans from here to there.
But you are right that the success of a colony is contingent upon much more than a safe and efficient (and cheap enough) means of transport.
So, is it possible to use the "iterative method" to build a safe colony? I think so. Obviously this takes time, but what it looks like is first building a small outpost with adequate life support systems where people can live (and probably do research) for brief periods. You first build and test the necessary systems on earth, then probably on the Moon or somewhere where failure doesn't mean death but just an early return. Once you've got confidence in the reliability of your systems you can use them on Mars in a small research facility. Over time this can expand in size and complexity. Every time that expansion requires a stepwise change, something completely new rather than just a new module duplicating what has already been working, you do some testing first before putting the safety of what has already been established at risk.
The point is that the iterative method doesn't mean "build a whole colony and see if it fails and everyone dies or not, and if they do make some changes an try again". Instead you can iterate on much smaller steps in that process. I actually thought the point was clear in my original response, but its fair if it wasn't.
I think this is true, but not that important. If it turns out that Starship can't fulfill that purpose or that SpaceX never sends people to Mars, let alone start a colony, but instead just revolutionizes the launch industry, that will still have been a huge success.Visiting Mars has been SpaceX's long-term goal since very early on. Indeed, landing on Mars isn't just one thing it is assumed Starship might be able to do once it's fully developed, it is the foundational mission of the vehicle. Starship's original name was "Mars Colonial Transporter". Musk talks about how important colonizing Mars is a lot, and to my knowledge SpaceX has not indicated anywhere that this eventuality is no longer its overarching mission.
With that in mind, it's natural to be curious about how seriously the company is taking this goal in terms of R&D. The rocket itself is important of course, but it seems to be rapidly approaching completion, so...what's being done, developed, announced? Or are we going to wait until the rocket's finished and then let Starship languish for twenty years while we start planning, developing and prototyping for what we're supposed to actually be doing once the rocket gets us to Mars?
Here, I think Zig is right and the rocket is really the most important thing to focus on at this point in time, so even if your only goal (rather than just a goal) was go to Mars, it would still make sense to put the vast majority of your effort into developing that rocket first, especially when its success is the thing that will give you funds to put into the next stage of the process.