Elon Musk suddenly changed his priority in space exploration from Mars to the Moon, of course investor cannot have any objections, but they are interest to know why there is an abrupt change. Simply because of keen competition in low orbit space, data centre and solar electricity exploration in space and the Moon, such as Lunar Ring of Japan. But for Mars Landing there is no competition.
The Apollo Project of Moon had six landings on the Moon from 1969 to 1973 and stopped. Why? Because there was no competition. After the first US landing, Soviet gave up the strive for landing on the Moon and concentrate on space station. Later on, US also stopped the rest of Moon projects.
China sent the first man to space in 2003, and US keep on watching. Their target is not on the Moon, and they wished to land on Mars earlier than US. Actually, while the Apollo project was still running, US did send uncrewed orbiter to Mars in 1971, and successfully had long term uncrewed landing in 1976. NASA had rover on Mars in 1997, since than Europe and India also had their exploration. In 2021, NASA also had their first flight in another planet which is helicopter on Mars. UAE had their orbiter, because it was the alignment of every 26 months, so China took chance to give others a shock. Their first exploration is 3 in 1, that is orbiting, uncrewed landing and rover. Please refer to The Express of 2026 and part of the table is reprinted today.
Barrack Obama thus expressed his wish is to send crew members to Mars and return in early 2030s. Later on, NASA with the help of SpaceX fixed the target in 2030, but hopefully 2029. Winter in Mars is quite horrible; there are great dessert storms so all rovers had to stop working and go for hibernation for they cannot take any photo. After winter, the rover of US woke up and continue working, but the Chinese machine cannot wake up. So, it needs some time to improve it. Later on, people found that Landing on Mars is a hard job when without experience of Landing on the Moon. So, China scheduled their landing on the Moon with crew members is 2030, and Landing on Mars will be in 2049, the 100th anniversary of the establishments of People’s Republic of China.
So, the original target of NASA is to land on Mars in 2030, and now even as said would be postponed 5 to 7 years, it is still 2037, much earlier than 2049 the Chinese landing.
For those that has a market dairy, should remember on Feb 2nd Elon Musk merged the Space X with xAI, both of them are not yet listed. But SpaceX at first said will use TSLA as IPO, and now merged with xAI. So how about TSLA? In late Jan, Musk said TSLA has started the tape set of AI-5 on e-cars and AI-6 is going to develop soon.
NVDA also expressed their program of space electricity and data centre TSLA has to face the competition there of. Together with the large consumption of Liquid Methane said yesterday, Elon Musk turned to the Moon instead of Mars, because no matter in case of private enterprise or national reputation, no one can chase near the mars Landing project no matter it is ESA, CNSA, ISRO, MBRSC…..