Based solely on this information, I vote for Aubrey to take us to Mars. If he can't or won't, then I vote for UP Aerospace, the people who previously lost, and recovered, Scotty's ashes.
On a serious note, I find it disturbing that Musk doesn't show any real sense of responsibility. From the second article: "We certainly felt a huge responsibility for getting this [the ashes] back to the customers. She [Wende Doohan] trusted us to fly it into space, which we did successfully, and she trusted us to find it." No such effort or statement was made by SpaceX.
This lack of responsibility goes further, in a more general manner. I can't trust SpaceX to put millions of people on Mars when they can't even be bothered to do a small test on the moon. I understand that the environments are different, so the techniques and technologies used for a moon settlement may not easily transfer to Mars, but there is no real reason not to make an effort, even if it's just a year-long experiment to see if ten people could survive. Even if the moon isn't an important strategic goal, and I'm not sure that it isn't, at least it makes for a good testing ground. Bypassing the moon for Mars smacks more of unbridled grandiosity than it does of responsible reality.
http://nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/space/03launchweb.html
That same statistic for Aubrey de Grey? 0.
Based solely on this information, I vote for Aubrey to take us to Mars. If he can't or won't, then I vote for UP Aerospace, the people who previously lost, and recovered, Scotty's ashes.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2007/05/18/4351626-scot...
On a serious note, I find it disturbing that Musk doesn't show any real sense of responsibility. From the second article: "We certainly felt a huge responsibility for getting this [the ashes] back to the customers. She [Wende Doohan] trusted us to fly it into space, which we did successfully, and she trusted us to find it." No such effort or statement was made by SpaceX.
This lack of responsibility goes further, in a more general manner. I can't trust SpaceX to put millions of people on Mars when they can't even be bothered to do a small test on the moon. I understand that the environments are different, so the techniques and technologies used for a moon settlement may not easily transfer to Mars, but there is no real reason not to make an effort, even if it's just a year-long experiment to see if ten people could survive. Even if the moon isn't an important strategic goal, and I'm not sure that it isn't, at least it makes for a good testing ground. Bypassing the moon for Mars smacks more of unbridled grandiosity than it does of responsible reality.