American space agency NASA’s Mars announcement has brought significant attention to its ambitious plans to establish a Mars colony. The US Congress had earlier expressed its reservations and criticised NASA’s Mars plan. Now, astrophysicist and public personality Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out the “delusions” of private spaceflight by companies like SpaceX and Mars One, raising eyebrows with his blatant but sound comments.

Mars One and SpaceX had made separate announcements of their ambitious plans to put the first humans on Mars. The former aims to start by sending missions in the form of unmanned robots and then followed by first settlers on the Red Planet. However, Neil deGrasse Tyson has expressed strong reservations about private companies getting humans to Mars. “They're not doing the same thing, and they can't, really,” Tyson told Business Insider. “The private company is not going to lead a mission to Mars. It's not going to happen. If they do, it'll be a one-off, and it's not a business model.”

Tyson clarified that the possibility of NASA using a spacecraft built by a private company for a Mars mission was still tangible. He said that it would be taxpayers’ money used by NASA for a private vehicle, which would be different than the pursuit of a mission to Mars by a private company.

The astrophysicist made a distinction between the plans of the two major space companies in the Mars race. “Mars One, let them dream. That’s not the delusion. The delusion is thinking that SpaceX is going to lead the space frontier,” Tyson told The Verge. “That’s just not going to happen, and it’s not going to happen for three really good reasons – one, it is very expensive; two, it is very dangerous to do it first; three, there is essentially no return on that investment that you’ve put in for having done it first.”

Tyson’s comments have brought an important point into consideration – the long-term economic viability of private projects into space. Governments are known to have a broader scope of making investments. To support his premise, Tyson gave the example of Christopher Columbus – whose journey was “not a private mission” and even though some private monies were involved, the ultimate declaration was made by the Queen and the King.

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