There are many problems that will have to be solved to have viable Martian habitats, and a lot of those can just as well be solved by someone else. It could be that maintaining a self-sufficient and productive ecosystem outside of Earth's atmosphere is a harder problem than building a reusable rocket, but it's also research that has fewer obstacles in the way of anyone who wants to contribute.
I do think that after many decades of Mars being sort of within reach but just impractically expensive to go there, now that it's almost time to start packing our bags we're not really prepared. Maybe SpaceX (or Tesla with their solar panels and batteries and EVs) will fill some of that gap, but it makes sense for them to put most of their focus on what they're best at.
Not sure why we don't have more non-Elon-associated organizations doing closed ecosystem testing, but I don't follow space-related news that closely and maybe it's already happening in ways that aren't highly visible like Biosphere-2 was.
> There are many problems that will have to be solved to have viable Martian habitats, and a lot of those can just as well be solved by someone else.
Someone else? Who? Governments aren't seriously working on this problem, and there's no money in it for the private sector.
Vertical farms growing organic lettuce and arugula in warehouses are not solving this problem, by the way. They are solving a much simpler, much less interesting problem.
I do think that after many decades of Mars being sort of within reach but just impractically expensive to go there, now that it's almost time to start packing our bags we're not really prepared. Maybe SpaceX (or Tesla with their solar panels and batteries and EVs) will fill some of that gap, but it makes sense for them to put most of their focus on what they're best at.
Not sure why we don't have more non-Elon-associated organizations doing closed ecosystem testing, but I don't follow space-related news that closely and maybe it's already happening in ways that aren't highly visible like Biosphere-2 was.