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Use Falcon Heavy by SpaceX or New Glenn by Blue Origin for a fraction of the cost of SLS.

Orion may be worth keeping. It is limited to 4 astronauts which is probably too small a crew for a 2.5 year Mars mission. I do think that it could be built much cheaper, however.



I don't think FH is enough for manned mars missions. It has enough delta V to land there but not to come back.


A Falcon Heavy has close to the capacity of the first SLS version, and about half the later versions. But you can launch 20 Falcon Heavies for the cost of one SLS.


The Falcon Heavy could send Red Dragons with supplies in advance of the ITS missions (this is in fact the plan).


You're right. FH would be only an intermediate step until ITS becomes available.




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