When you love technology as much as you obviously do, it can be difficult to factor in the effects of insanity. You can't believe that Musk would launch a rocket in the sand (because that's what he believes he'll have to do on Mars) even though EVERY seasoned rocket engineer is telling him not to. That it's a problem to solve AFTER they get a successful launch using proven launch-pad technology.

There's a reason SpaceX is being developing away from the core SpaceX business. Why it's building its own community, etc. I mean Will, look at all the photos of Starship development, all the pickup trucks, the cranes from rental companies, it looks like what I believe it is, Musk's personal hobby. To me, it's near circus level. The deal with SpaceX (and it's defense and corporate users) is that he can play with Starship all he wants but he has to leave the rest of SpaceX alone. That's my assessment. We'll have to wait for the NDA's to expire.

The launch pad alone for SLS is around $1 billion I believe. Do you believe they'd spend that kind of money just for giggles? That tells me Musk just doesn't have the money to do it right. It doesn't matter how many billions you have. If you don't have enough to pay for a launch pad AND a field of half-built rockets you don't have it.

Forget what you want to happen. Look coldly at what has been happening. There is no progress. There are only the results seasoned engineers expect in private. The results you'd expect if a child kept trying to build a rocket to Mars using unproven technologies in EVERY aspect of his design.