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Yes, this is why I said I would only technically be winning my bet, as, if SpaceX achieves all that was promised, just a few years later, the letter of my predictions would pan out, but not the spirit. Conversely, if with the new cash injection they will actually beat my deadline for going to orbit, but crash and burn because they threw all their money at the AI trend, I said I would be losing only technically.
I mean, again, technically... No worries, my assumption was they won't make an attempt. The most expansive scenario where I'd claim a win, was if they suffered a major failure outside Mars' gravity well, and even then you could talk me into accepting it as a tie or a win for you,
Yeah, but what would be the point? I don't think they have a contract for going to Mars, and there's not much they can do to make money from this. Well... I suppose there's the hype factor I keep bringing up.
We could probably settle that now, despite you being on track to win in a way that makes the question moot. My inclination would be that "they go interplanetary, but not within expected error margins of their initial trajectory, and they can't course-correct with a later burn before the year is out" counts as a win for you, whereas "they start on their expected interplanetary trajectory, under full control, but they fail a normal course correction burn (or plane change burn, attitude control, whatever doesn't get them from a good Mars transit trajectory to a good Mars entry trajectory) after they're out of Earth's gravity well" counts as a win for me. Fair? IMO "heading to Mars but not quite making Mars entry" still counts as "sending" like I said, even if I was imagining burning up in the atmosphere rather than missing it. But since "they make their initial trajectory and afterward have some kind of restart or attitude control issue" has been a problem in 2 or 3 out of 8 flights that did make the intended trajectory, and that's despite trying to restart control after a delay of only minutes rather than weeks, if they do manage to yeet one off on tight timelines then problems with more frozen valves or what have you are surely a significant failure mode risk.
I maintain that the hype is an incredibly important factor for them, just not because of the stock market, rather because it's how SpaceX manages to retain a whole lot of SpaceX employees, despite how many of them could find lower stress or higher pay or both as Blue Origin employees or RocketLab employees or Boeing employees or so on. If SpaceX is managing Moon landings by 2029, though, that might be enough "we're on the way to Mars" hype for more delays on the direct part of the path to be forgiven.
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