Does "reach" mean enter Mars orbit?

@Gigacasting ^ reach orbit or reach sphere of influence, or land or flyby or ...

I don't think it's so unlikely. To send a ship to mars, they "only" need a fully fueled ship in low earth orbit. It may be the case that they need to do that anyway as a demonstration for the Artemis program. If they have fueled the ship in such a test, they only need to push the button and send it off to mars. So i would guess like a 55% chance they do that in 2026, when such demonstrations may be needed on the Artemis timeline.

@drive I mean they're already launching the vehicles with little hope of recovery lol, why wouldn't they just launch one at mars and gather all that data

@Riley12 Can't get to Mars without being refuelled in orbit. That refuelling could be rather expensive if they cannot recover tankers. A couple of tankers might be enough to flyby Mars with some optimistic assumptions which might not be too bad if SH boosters are reusable. More than flyby might require 3-5 tankers and without reuse of tankers that is a lot of cost and time that might have better development work use when NASA might well be keen to see HLS development work and build progress.

More than flyby might also require lots more development but maybe these things can be done and tested in same test flights as catch, reuse, and refuel tests?

Flyby doesn't really get the data they really want for aerocapture and entry descent landing at Mars. It could be useful tests of guidance navigation and communication at long distance, but maybe this could be adequately tested with HLS work or elsewhere without a mars window deadline..

@drive AIUI it doesn't need to be fully fuelled. Full = ~1550 tons of prop. 260tons may be enough to get there though more to enter orbit, more for deorbit, more for landing.

Rather strangely, lunar does require full refuelling and probably also sending two ships where one lands and one doesn't to share the load, because there is no aerobraking and you also want to get back from lunar orbit.

I don’t think that a starship will resch mars boy 2030. It‘s not so unlikely, however I think it will be to hard to manage until 2030. Until 2040 I think it’s quite save that a starship will reach mars.

Flyby included I guess? E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocco%27s_Multiplanetary_Trajectory

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1768810190718009446?t=8qFkM5OYWrWSvqv58HQE_Q&s=19

This would be an exciting market to lose money on.

I believe this question is referring to whether a Starship will land successfully on Mars by 2030. Am I right, or is there anything else?

@bohaska Well, Gigacasting commented that orbiting Mars without landing also counts.

Simply put, I believe Elon Musk is a conman along the same vein as Elisabeth Holmes but simply more extreme and yet to be fully noticed. Thusly, anything he is involved with should be looked at with deep suspicion in my opinion. He frequently misses deadlines and does not deliver on promises when it comes to works and businesses such as the Hyperloop, Cyber-truck and SpaceX as well. Even rudimentary research would show this but I personally would recommend the work of Thunderf00t on YouTube or Common Sense Skeptic or if one is more reading inclined this article should suffice:

https://medium.com/@DevinGates/elon-musk-the-man-the-myth-the-con-75b7aee73e90

There will be no landing on Mars by SpaceX let alone colonization of the planet. Mark my words. This man and everything he's involved with are just over-promised cons.

@AwaleAbdi you are dumb please tell me how equating missed deadline and conman works.

@AwaleAbdi I agree mostly, but SpaceX seems to be doing great despite him

@AwaleAbdi I feel like this is a spam comment unless you bet on it.

Near Mars; with or without people