Musk: "We're going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction."

[0rganism]

7. Mars is a boondoggle. The moon is our natural jumping-off point for space exploration

It's like nature hands us a built-in space station full of ice and hydrogen isotopes perfect for fusion reactors with a low-gravity environment ideal for superscale construction of colonies and craft, less than a light minute from home.

Musk wants humanity to ditch all that for a risky shot at a barren wasteland of a planet beset by dust storms with little in the way of observed resources, no planetary magnetic field, and at least one moon with a sharply-decaying orbit, far enough away from Earth that any colony operates entirely on its own, with near-zero hope of extraction if anything goes wrong. Stupid and Expensive, rolled into one big government contract for Musk. Maybe he's fixated on mining the asteroid belt or some such. He's now positioned to singlehandedly and permanently ruin the USA's chances at a strong space program with a thriving off-world colony.

We are on the verge of losing everything.