was empty, with just one VIP passenger. Maybe he was on a top secret mission, but surely that was an extravagance not even a spare-faring power could afford.

The orbiting space station was also empty, just Heywood Floyd and a few snoopy Russians and lots of deserted concourse. Again, a lot of reserve capacity there. The same can be said for the liner that transports Floyd to the moon, seats for a hundred passengers (and no doubt sleeping and lounge facilities) and he's the only passenger.

And of course, the elaborate drydock facility, no doubt excavated at great expense and effort, when a pressurized vehicle or an extending airtight boarding tunnel could probably have unloaded the passengers and their luggage just as easily and effectively.

I bring this up to remind us how our fictional representations of space travel reflect our emotional hopes and prejudices, not the financial and engineering realities of maintaining an operating base, one with a real scientific mission, on another world.

And yeah, I'm a space groupie, too. I want to go there, and I want to do things when I get there, even if it means I spend most of my time in free fall in a cramped spacecraft between planetfalls. But I don't want to live in an underground tunnel for the rest of my life Looking at video of an unchanging landscape (no doubt littered with construction debris and empty containers and busted equipment). Meanwhile I would probably be working my ass off to try and earn my fare home.

As for Elon Musk, he's an ass. There may be a role for entrepreneurs in space exploration, but not trendy hip ones.