The total mass launched to orbit is currently in the order of 500 tons per year. To start a colony on Mars, millions of tons of material would need to be shipped there from Earth. This massive launch capacity is why they want to build so many ships and creating an assembly line is how they want to do it.
Cool story bro but let's just think for a minute, why do you need an assembly line of spaceships now/near future when you don't even have one? when you ARE far away from sending an human to orbit Mars, let alone land one there? I'm talking about the actual realist act of doing that, not a pseudo Hollywood story of sending a "suicide mission", for what? Seriously, for what? When the day comes ( it never will, in those terms ) I want to see who actually steps up.
All of this assembly line talk is "idea guy" talk trying to keep all the plates spinning. Mars is just a pretext for other more mundane/ego/profit driven things.
And what I criticize is this mass stupidity driven romanticism where nobody calls him out on his Starship sized bullshit.
