Talking about a city on Mars by the middle of this century—even as SpaceX has yet to fly its first cargo mission to Earth orbit—is one of the reasons space professionals are skeptical about Musk’s claims.
And yet, it's this kind of completely unrealistic goals that really pushes things forward. Even if SpaceX only gets... dunno, 25% of the way to that goal, chances are they'll have accomplished more than anyone else is trying.
NASA is about to launch a 1 ton rover on mars and even if the mission in a compleat failure they have already sent enough stuff to the Mars that we know a lot about the planet's geology, history, chemistry, and have a fairly high resolution imaging of the entire surface. The only meaningful step after this is a self sustaining colony on Mars that can exist without supply's from earth. Everything else IMO is just showmanship.
PS: Yea I know a solid manufacturing base plus 5+ million people might seem like several steps away, but until that happens we don't have meaningful levels of redundancy, just an outpost that would take a while to die off. (bad vacation) http://verydemotivational.memebase.com/2010/10/22/demotivati...
And yet, it's this kind of completely unrealistic goals that really pushes things forward. Even if SpaceX only gets... dunno, 25% of the way to that goal, chances are they'll have accomplished more than anyone else is trying.