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I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected to Mars colonization. 1. Electric cars for transport, Check. 2. Solar panels and
by calgoo 7y ago
I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected to Mars colonization.
1. Electric cars for transport, Check.
2. Solar panels and batteries for power generation and storage, check.
3. Tunnel digging equipment for making underground bases and transport, check.
4. Satellite communications for an entire planet, check.
5. Then finally, the actual rockets to get us there.
Hopefully he will continue development to the point where the tech can be used on Mars.
- snazz 7y agoHas he specifically called out the connection or is this your pet conspiracy theory? It doesn’t seem too far off, to be honest.
- ncallaway 7y agoI don't think he's mentioned it specifically for each of the things in the checklist. I'm pretty sure I recall him mentioning electric vehicles and solar cells being important for mars, but I don't remember the interview. Elon and SpaceX have been pretty explicit about Starlink as a system for funding the development of Mars transit vehicles and initial colony, though I'm sure a mini-Starlink around Mars would be in the long term plans. I don't recall anywhere that Elon Musk has mentioned anything about The Boring Company being used for tunneling on mars, but the connection makes a lot of sense to me, as initial colony development would probably take place largely underground as a cheap radiation shield.
- _Microft 7y agoIt's not just that. The Boring Company wants to automate tunneling as much as possible (manual labour would be highly impractical in a spacesuit), speed it up and make it a continuous process. It also wants to power the boring machine by Tesla PowerPacks to remove the need for kilometers of cables. All of that seems suited not just for cheap tunneling but for Mars as well.
- netzone 7y agoI guess mobile PowerPacks with solar panels? Just deploy a few thousand outside the tunneling area and then automate the battery switching. Could run it 24/7 without anyone ever going to Mars even.
- _Microft 7y agoThat's how I understood. Instead of laying cables, the packs are moved back and forth between the charging site and the tunnel drilling machine.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- _Microft 7y agoI came to the same conclusion by the way, so OP is not alone with this ;)
- kelnos 7y agoThere's a series of posts on WaitButWhy[0] about Elon Musk and his various companies and strategies. The level of Musk worship there generally rubs me the wrong way, but I think the conclusions are valid: the author also interviewed Musk one-on-one in 2015 and took a deep-dive into his businesses, so I would trust the author's conclusions. Essentially, Musk expects/worries that an extinction event (whether as a result of climate change, an asteroid impact, or whatever) will wipe out humanity on Earth, and believes that the best hope for our continued survival is to colonize other planets. [0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/03/elon-musk-post-series.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/03/elon-musk-post-series.html
- not_real_acct 7y agoOver a decade ago, when Amazon wasn't the powerhouse it is today, I dated someone who routinely interacted with Jeff Bezos. According to them, Bezos feels the same way. Amazon is basically a means-to-an-end, and that "end" is to get humanity into outer space, as an insurance policy in the event of a catastrophe on earth.
- ambicapter 7y agoHow come Bezos has never brought this up, ever?
- EquallyJust 7y agoGiven his support for The Long Now and Blue Origin it doesn't surprise me much. http://longnow.org/ http://longnow.org/
- SECProto 7y agoHe founded Blue Origin in 2000. For whatever reason, he is the opposite of Musk about his Space company - shares the barest minimum possible.
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- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt's a pretty natural conclusion people frequently arrive at. That said, I don't think it's valid, as I don't believe it was all explicitly planned like that. In particular: 1. Electric cars were created with Earth in mind. Musk was, and probably still is, very interested in ways to help fix the climate issue, and that reason was mentioned explicitly. 2. Connected to 1, not to Mars. 3. I'm not sure what the motivation here is; the official one was that Musk was bored ( :) ) in traffic. It meshes with Tesla's business if properly integrated. That said, the utility of tunnels for Mars settlement seems so big that I'm pretty sure he had it in mind too. 4. No colonies in a nearby future will need a Starlink-scale planetary Internet network. I'm 100% buying the official version here: Starlink exists to generate revenue for further work on the Mars transportation system/BFR (whatever its current name; Starship I think?). I really don't think these were part of a grand plan all along. But they're all ultimately relevant for Mars.
- badamp 7y agoWhat is special about 1, 2, and 4 specific to Mars colonization? Even 3. Like those things don’t even seem like the top of the list as the next things to tackle for planet colonization? (Is a Tesla the next important thing to tackle?) What about like food and environmental support since we can’t actually breath there? This just sounds like some tortured narrative.
- the8472 7y agoyes. https://www.inverse.com/article/34451-elon-musk-s-tunnel-project-is-just-practice-for-martian-tunnels https://www.inverse.com/article/34451-elon-musk-s-tunnel-pro...
- GuB-42 7y agoFor SpaceX, yes, obviously. For Hyperloop, he did too. And Hyperloop involve battery powered electric vehicles, tunnels and solar panels (on top). So indirectly, there is a connection. He also made clear that colonizing Mars, or at least getting partway through is one of his life goals, if not his life goal. There is definitely a connection. But following the progression, it seems like Mars isn't the reason he started these companies, but "how can I make it useful on Mars" is definitely a consideration.
- novalis78 7y ago6. Thorium reactor for industrial power needs.
- spraak 7y agoThe goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west
- tdb7893 7y agoI think the idea is that they aren't mutually exclusive. I think in fact the projects are generally good examples of how you can do both.
- pesfandiar 7y agoAgreed. Let's first try and "colonize" places like Nevada. Getting safe drinking water to many major urban centres could become a challenging engineering problem in the upcoming decades, much more worthwhile to solve than living on Mars.
- cycrutchfield 7y agoWhy not both?
- niftich 7y agoThere are large parts of Nevada that could be 'reclaimed' (in the Bureau of Reclamation sense) without too much effort -- just a couple of well-placed dams, berms, and canals. Large parts of the state are in closed basins, from which the water just evaporates anyway, so using it first within the basin would make sense. Extensive projects like this were once the norm, but fell out of favor as the 1970s transitioned into the 1980s, feeling the impact of the environmentalist movement, the opposition of Jimmy Carter, and the failure of the Teton Dam. Some big urban areas already need to rely on interbasin transfers for their water supply: LA, NYC, San Diego, Mexico City, SLC, Denver. Tunnels for water would actually be a sensible and 'boring' pivot for the Boring Company.
- borkt 7y agoAlso much, much easier to solve, and more than possible with existing technology. May require more clean energy but it can be solved.
- erentz 7y agoAnd: Hyperloop actually made sense when you put it in the context of mars. You want transport to link your distant colonies. By running it in tubes you protect it from the storms. And to top it off there’s an extremely low air pressure on Mars so you don’t need to evacuate the tubes like you did on the earthbound proposal. It made no sense on earth but sorta makes sense on Mars. I’m pretty sure this is where the idea was born.
- tedmcory77 7y agoDon't forget making bricks from the tunnels that have been dug...
- paulcole 7y agoMy theory is that he isn't even interested in Mars colonization. Like any great magician, it's just a misdirection.
- dls2016 7y agoI really can’t believe how many people on here take Musk seriously. Tesla is going bankrupt, there’s no evidence that SpaceX is profitable nor that reusable rockets will help in this regard and the Boring Co is a less funny take on Lyle Lanley (they have zero engineering insight as far as I can see).
- greglindahl 7y agoOne definition of a startup is that it's a company that's going bankrupt. HN is usually friendly to startups, while stock trading websites hate them.
- ekianjo 7y agoThe big missing part is facilities to enable sustained life on other planets such as Mars. We still pretty much have no clue how to engineer it right, and it does not seem that Musk or any of its ventures is working on it.
- computerex 7y agoYou are reading into it. He himself claimed to have found the boring company because traffic is soul sucking.
- mar77i 7y agoI wonder what he'll need a flamethrower for, on mars.
- DeonPenny 7y agoThe more it happens the more I hope he succeeds despite all the push back. Men who have goals this grand deserve a shot at finishing them.
- HALtheWise 7y agoI see this point get made often, but I'm not sure it is an insightful way to look at the world. Tesla cars are only barely related to Mars colonization, and PayPal is not really at all, which is a product conveniently ignored in your post. Even the SpaceX internet satellite constellation looks almost nothing like what internet access on Mars will be anytime in the forseeable future. It seems like a similarly strong argument could be made that every Google product is designed for Mars colonization. I bring this up because I think it is important that Elon has some projects targeted at making the world better today, like PayPal, the Boring Company, and Starlink, some projects designed to avoid catastrophes a few decades from now, like Tesla and Solar City, and some projects designed to help humanity centuries from now, like SpaceX going to Mars. This is a very nice way of resolving the objection that Elon should focus on Earth's problems, which is to observe that you can both make the world a better place today while also working towards a brighter long term future. I think that to the extent that Elon will inevitably serve as a role model, I want that part of the story to be told as well.
- idlewords 7y agoMars is going to need some kind of payment system! Also a method for rescuing children trapped in Mars caves.
- alaskamiller 7y agoElon is new Steve Jobs is the new Jesus. Anyone can foist one's own unbridled ambitions, mixed in with a dash of lottery dreaming, tossed in with a bit of hubris, to come up with whatever the bright shiny future could be.
- gleenn 7y agoThe difference might be they were also heads of million dollar companies. How many of those have you or I started?
- alaskamiller 7y agoYou wouldn't know.
- idlewords 7y agoMars colonization involves building an entire industrial economy from scratch on top of an airless pile of rusty sand, so you can connect anything you want to it. The idea that a planetary satellite network would be a top priority for a place with no air and nothing to eat is also a curious one. Musk would be better off developing an interest in hydroponics and radiation shielding.
- GuB-42 7y agoWhile I don't discount Musk's obsession with Mars, the recurring pattern I see is government money. - Electric cars: subsidies - Solar panels: subsidies - Tunnel: transport infrastructure - Rockets: NASA/military contracts Starlink looks more like a commercial project but it doesn't mean the government can't get interested. After all, the internet itself started as a military project. There are missing pieces in both theories (Mars and government money), the biggest one being PayPal. And some of them don't fit perfectly. So chances are that we are just making stuff up.
- greglindahl 7y agoWinning a competition to ship cargo and then people to the space station is a bad thing? Is there some universe in which entrepreneurs exit the electric car industry solely because the government starts offering consumers subsidies to buy them?
- GuB-42 7y agoIt is not a bad thing. I will never criticize a company for making money or an entrepreneur for grabbing opportunities. I don't like the hype around Elon Musk and I think Hyperloop is a borderline scam (I can detail if you want). However I also think the success of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX are well deserved. With them the world is a better place and Elon Musk is a richer man, that's capitalism working as intended. That subsidies helped creating a company that makes nice electric cars and solar panels is the reason the subsidies exist in the first place. My previous point wasn't a criticism.
- hyperpallium 7y agoAnything civilization-related is relevant to recreating civilization. TBF he is targeting infrastructure. There's also: water, food, police, courts, legislature/executive, construction, clothing, computation, etc.