This mission is an orbital science mission studying Mars' atmosphere, not the same objective as SpaceX's long-term goal of sending large cargo and eventually humans to Mars. So I think the title might be taking the piss just a smidge.

NASA always needs more competition to keep launch costs low and encouraging innovation and it seems like he hasn't been CEO for a long time. This is indicative of funding competition which is a good thing.

Source: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-announces-public-priv...

For context, Relativity gained Eric Schmidt as CEO in March last year.

They built a 3D printed small sat launcher which failed it's first launch. They cancelled further work in favour of Terran R which has less 3D printing. First launch probably early next year. First successful launch, probably late next year.

A Mars mission 2028 is not crazy but it's ambitious.

Relativity Space had a really interesting idea even before Eric Schmidt bought it. The key ideas were new technologies in 3d printing of designs for rapid iteration of design-to-implementation on what was previously extremely difficult (rocket engines, rocket bodies).

They even called their printers "Pylons" if recall (a nod to StarCraft's Protoss). The manufacturing tech has far broader implications than the application they were putting it toward.

My worry is that Eric bought them solely to get launch-for-compute in his pocket. Given his track record of "steal and when you get caught just have the lawyers 'clean all that up'" and "we didn't intend to unleash evil on the world, 'but it happened'" aren't encouraging. I always hope the golden goose doesn't get carved to pieces, but it usually happens.

Don't read too much into this.

The way these always work is they pick a low-stakes mission to give a new competitor a chance to build the market. If they're on track to miss the deadline badly they'll switch vendors to SpaceX who they know can pick up the slack on a short timeline. And if they do manage to deliver, great.

I need to jump on this rocket company spacewagon.

  Claude, make me a space rocket. Using only lisp, if and regex statements.

Uh huh. Add it to the list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crewed_Mars_mission_pl...

> might just beat SpaceX to Mars.

SpaceX/Musk can always spin it as “we have more ambitious goals than some lowly scientific instruments”.

Now that spacex is public we can expect more headlines like this to sway the price similar to what is done with tesla.

"Don't read to much into this. It's just a key talent, stable and productive, forming relationships with a key partner, gathering experience that you would think would be critical information to another companies valuation."

Folks, this is not a democracy, or a meritocracy, it is a corpocracy.

Picking company that haven't launched anything at the size and range your need where there are competitors that do is ... interesting move.

Using private rocket companies is highly concerning.