THE PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE
SPACE DEVELOPMENT
- establishing an initial infrastructure on the Moon -

We all hope that Starship development is completely successful. But success is not guaranteed. In particular, successful development requires sufficient funding over time and an economic collapse or something happening personally to Elon Musk could interrupt that funding. None-the-less, any level of success of the development of Starship would mean pretty significant changes in space development.

.	LEVEL 1 - Likely - Starship to Orbit The easiest level is Starship to orbit without any reuse. That in and of itself will dramatically reduce the cost of SHLV to LEO compared to SLS and greatly reduce the cost of Starlink which will yield annual revenue comparable to the entire NASA budget!
.	LEVEL 2 - Likely - Recovery of the Booster The next harder level is the recovery of first stage. This will dramatically, dramatically reduce cost. We believe that this step is likely because SpaceX has a lot of experience retrieving and reusing the first stages of their Falcon 9 rockets.
.	LEVEL 3 - Fairly likely - Refueling in LEO From what leaders in the field have said, we consider refueling in LEO to be likely. This will substantially increase the mass of a unified SHLV payload towards the Moon and Mars (TLI & TMI).
.	LEVEL 4 - Fairly likely - Landing on the Moon A harder but still doable level will be landing on the Moon which means 100+ payload to Luna. We believe that this step, if not mastered immediately, will be achieved given enough attempts. This capability means humanity's first permanent foothold off Earth - A permanent, International Lunar Base.
.	LEVEL 5 - Challenging - Landing on Mars A significantly harder level is landing on Mars. However, given Starbase's capability of producing multiple Starships per years and if SpaceX spaces out Mars-bound Starships by several days then software adjustments could be made with each Starship landing attempt. Then when the next Earth-Mars window opens, Starships with hardware changes can be launched and attempt landings. Given all this, we think that by the end of the 2024 and 2026 launch windows, SpaceX will most likely have been able to achieve multiple cargo landings on Mars and that human landings will probably follow immediately afterwards. So we think that humans on the surface of Mars by 2029 is possible and 2031 is more likely than not! This means a large, permanent International Mars Base. .
.	LEVEL 6 - Hardest - Re-entry The hardest level is re-entry of Starship, landing, and reuse. Achieve this and one gets prices so low as to allow private settlement off Earth. Then we are talking about perhaps the most significant turning point in human history which is when humanity starts moving beyond Earth! The good news is that SpaceX will attempt re-entry, landing, and reuse from its first orbital attempt. If they succeed, we believe that the other steps will come in time. It's very exciting times that we live in, and we should feel privileged to be alive to witness it?