>>10846812>fly to MarsFly it to the Moon and rack up those in-space hours to get real world experience. Send up a Starship with life support running and a dummy 'crew' that consumes those life support resources and let it sit in the Van Allen belts for a year to simulate being cooked in interplanetary space for a decade.
>land on itPerform entries into Earth's atmosphere at altitudes and speeds relevant tot hose experienced entering from interplanetary space at Mars. Do this a dozen times to gather data. Do a dry run with several unmanned Starships a launch window or two before you want to send people.
>be refueledThey will be doing this on Earth all the time, or do you mean producing fuel? The Sabatier process is very well understood and very simple/safe, the biggest problems will be supplying the power necessary and gathering the water necessary. If they can land near a glacier or on top of permafrost that solves issue #2.
>Ignite engines 18 months laterThey can test this by landing a Starship in the desert on Earth, waiting 18 months with it out in the elements, and then launching it. Earth's highly variable, humid, more chaotic environment will be far more punishing than anything on Mars. For added realism put the Starship in Antarctica, for the temperature.
>And fucking dive into Earth's atmosphereThey will have done this hundreds or even thousands of times, they will have massive experience with Starship atmospheric entry.
>We need a demo automated mission before risking any livesThat is quite literally their plan, already. Who are you arguing against?
