Musk has been clearly stating that one of his long term goals is exploration and colonization of Mars. As an example: Elon Musk: The Case for Mars. That mission statement is written right into SpaceX documentation: About SpaceX

There's no need to do that much maneuvering. I'm not talking about wholesale landing on the X (marks the spot). You only have to do minor course corrections to be sure you land in roughly the right region on the surface. Mars missions will need some kind of transportation (or what's the point). You only need to put the drop within a day or two transport distance.

You realize you could control flight leading up to re-entry and upon re-entry, right?

The left hand knows not what the right hand is doing.

It's the only way to be sure.

U2 aircraft are responsible for some. F-117 stealth fighters were responsible for quite a few too -- they were operational for over a decade before it was publically acknowledged they existed.

This. the described method could be used to litter Mars' orbit with supplies, which would be scooped up by the planet periodically.

This has been standard NASA thinking for decades, that it was too hard to start an engine in the supersonic regime, hard to control flight, and therefor too risky to incorporate into any mission. However, SpaceX has shown that you can relight an engine pointed into a supersonic flow, and maintain control of the vehicle with the engine pointed into the supersonic flow. It's not without flaws, but it works. There are groups inside NASA that are beginning to rethink the old arguments and investigate this for use in future applications.

If the plane makes it to mass production and get widely implemented, which it seems destined to do thanks to inertia and politics... I predict the F-35 will be awesome... in about 15 or 20 years, once they've worked all the bugs out and upgraded the systems.

Neat. But way to slow for an industrial sorting process. Use a fast PLC with a vision system. Use bursts of high pressure air to blow the M&M into the appropriate chute as it goes by on a high speed conveyor. blah, blah, blah. Actually, isn't it faster just to buy the M&M's in bulk, pre-sorted, directly from M&M Mars ?

In-house technical training available, daily. Unfiltered access to the internet at work. Nearly 100% retention rate. Must be an awesome place to work!

It's pretty common for there to be a data link from the control system to the outside world. This is to provide feedback and monitoring capability -- for load balancing, security, and so the managers have access to information about the state of the machine(s). If they're smart, this data stream is one way only, with an intermediary firewall / server controlling access. If they're really smart, the cable only has the Tx pair connected.

Define "life"

More important, will the joke run Crysis?

You can eat marrow; and, with a little grinding, you can eat bone meal as well.