"Next, at least one of the big aerospace players has talked about having an ion engine strong enough to take payload from LEO to geostationary orbit, possibly beyond. It can't handle launching, it definitely won't be high speed, but it could be low-cost and reliable freight handling, shuffling from low-orbit to high…

Oops, sorry, you were talking about the Moon. Yes, Dragon + Falcon Heavy could do a Zond-like circumlunar flight (for which a market seems to exist, if you can come in at less than $150 million USD per seat...that's what the Russians might do it for, along with the US company Space Adventures), but again, I have…

Oh, the market would be there, but for what Captain Midnight alludes to, is the physics?

"Dragon is already designed to handle lunar (or even martian) return re-entry velocities, so as far as I can tell, DragonRider can already do this (admittedly pointless) mission unmodified."

"I did not know that Musk said that his ultimate goal is something as big as Mars. And i think that i might just have a new Hero!"

No doubt that adding new information, and documenting changes, is why Enterprise-E (and likely other large starships) have a specific stellar cartography function...

"And then the bit about how the stars look different from different directions. You know we _already_ have we have fully 3D star maps right? So we can model how the stars should look from any position?"

That's a whole other issue. Just pretend we have FTL for the sake of argument...

If Earth is a spaceship...show me where the helm is, and how we plan to land it.

I think you'll find some of your answers here (I just learned it this morning, myself):

When the USPS moves mail, it doesn't do it on planes that are owned by the government, or designed to their specs, they just contract services to 'private' operators of commercial aircraft, who also serve other users (which may even have included yourself at some time).

I would talk to SpaceX competitor Sierra Nevada about lifting bodies...

They always did. Not the X-37b itself, but its launcher, the Atlas V, and its EELV cousin the Delta IV. Both from the United Launch Alliance (ULA), a consortium of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. They launch various military satellites as well as commercial payloads.

Because there's a lot of Libertarian-leaning SF, too...

Actually, this is a modest, but real step in that direction...

Erik, muscles we can pretty much deal with. Bone loss is the driving issue. Here's the current thinking on it:

Until you have (relatively) low cost access to the Lunar surface, no large and continuing presence makes sense. Attacking the 'cost prohibitive' aspect, is your first goal.

Beneficial how? Where are the commercial fusion reactors that can use it?

Believe. When. See.

You make the mistake of assuming everything done in space is or ever was all about science.