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You're looking at the world as a poor person. If you had Elon's brilliance you'd probably quit after you made $5 million dollars or so and definitely after you

You're looking at the world as a poor person. If you had Elon's brilliance you'd probably quit after you made $5 million dollars or so and definitely after you sold Zip2 back in the 1990s and spent the rest of your life on the beach. The only reason he's still working as hard as he does is not because he wants to spend that on himself. He wants the glory of going to Mars and having a positive impact on humanity and that requires control of the activities of large companies like SpaceX, etc. which requires ownership stakes in those companies that are valued in the billions. One of the reasons that he campaigned so hard for Trump is that Kamala's proposed wealth taxes on unrealized capital gains were going to take his companies from him and he'd have to sell to Vanguard or Blackrock, who would give control of the companies to Boeing-tier mediocrity which would mean that we'd never get to Mars. There have been so many companies where the founders sold out and retired because they had enough money and they got bought by big conglomerates who destroyed those companies with mediocre management and neglect. This is the great thing about Elon, he just keeps building and leveraging all that money to create bigger and bigger companies using his creativity and management ability to achieve his goal of launching an era of space exploration.

7thaccount 2y ago
We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point? Elon is an oligarch plain and simple. SpaceX is impressive, and I'm a big fan of NASA's research, but let's look past the marketing of him trying to save the human species or whatever. I do think humanity may have to settle another world (or move to a post-biological existence where we can just park our satellite brains around a star for energy), but this is going to take a lot of scientific advancement over many centuries. Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there. In short, our best approach is to save the planet we already have and continue funding scientific research.
- kiba 2y ago
  We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point? People always look at this with hard nosed pragmatism. That's the wrong lens to view Space colonization. It's a vision and a dream.
- someuser2345 2y ago
  > There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. That is true for lots of other things. What's the point of building the Taj Mahal? What's the point of running a marathon? What's the point of getting the world record for the longest time spent underwater? Just to show that we can. > Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there. I agree that we probably won't be able to have a viable Mars colony in our lifetime. However, I do think that the pursuit of that goal will result in lots of useful inventions; just look at what SpaceX has accomplished already.
  - jay_kyburz 2y ago
    Musk aside, I think there is huge value in knowing how to sustain human life indefinitely without the earth. In fact, I think its inevitable that humans will need to leave earth at some point in our future. It may simply be as a result of population and overcrowding, it may be to flee war and persecution. I think there is a small chance we have already made changes to our atmosphere that make life here incompatible with humans. Its possible that within just a few hundred years, humans need to live entirely within climate controlled environments. If I had Musk level money I would be working on this now.
  - 7thaccount 2y ago
    Making a reusable rocket is not the same thing as a sustainable settlement in a hostile environment. I mean sure ...why not other than it's a huge waste of resources.
macintux 2y ago
That is a wildly generous interpretation of his behavior and motivations.
- fdschoeneman 2y ago
  It's the most likely interpretation toe because it fits the known facts. Ungenerous interpretations don't make sense and don't fit the known facts. Musk isn't hiding his intentions. He's blasting them. He wants to make humans an interplanetary species. He wants his name to be associated with that for millennia. I don't see anything wrong with that and have trouble understanding why people hate him souch for it.
  - Zanfa 2y ago
    > Musk isn't hiding his intentions. He's blasting them. He wants to make humans an interplanetary species. What people say about what and why they do things and why they actually do them are rarely correlated.
    - fdschoeneman 2y ago
      Okay. What are his intentions? Since you're a mind reader?
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        It ain't deep. He wants to influence American policty to get more money for whatever personal ideals he has. This isn't mind reading so much as reflecting on his actions from this year alone.
  - kiba 2y ago
    That is not what people hate Musk for. They hate Musk because he's that unlikable.
    - fdschoeneman 2y ago
scottLobster 2y ago
Yeah, all his antics in buying/posting on Twitter and his pushing of the Cybertruck, BS androids, "hyperloop" etc are totally part of a grand mission in the service of mankind, and not the acts of an obsessive, socially mal-adjusted narcissist. Gwynne Shotwell is more responsible for SpaceX's operational success than Elon will ever be, she's clearly done a great job of managing up and letting him take the "glory" he so desperately yearns for, but all he really provided was the initial vision and money. Not to understate that contribution, but his supposed "brilliance" is pure marketing. We've seen what happens we he actually gets meaningful operational control of a company (Twitter) and a product (Cybertruck), and it isn't good.
Spooky23 2y ago
ROFL. Thanks for taking up the mantle for the poor multibillionaires. The poor guy is homeless, after all. There’s nothing more hilarious than folks devoting time to simp for people like this.
hilux 2y ago
Or maybe he just likes the attention, and he likes "winning," as measured by the size of his wealth. I can think of a prominent politician with the same qualities.

7thaccount 2y ago

We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point? Elon is an oligarch plain and simple. SpaceX is impressive, and I'm a big fan of NASA's research, but let's look past the marketing of him trying to save the human species or whatever. I do think humanity may have to settle another world (or move to a post-biological existence where we can just park our satellite brains around a star for energy), but this is going to take a lot of scientific advancement over many centuries. Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there. In short, our best approach is to save the planet we already have and continue funding scientific research.

kiba 2y ago
We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point? People always look at this with hard nosed pragmatism. That's the wrong lens to view Space colonization. It's a vision and a dream.
someuser2345 2y ago
> There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. That is true for lots of other things. What's the point of building the Taj Mahal? What's the point of running a marathon? What's the point of getting the world record for the longest time spent underwater? Just to show that we can. > Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there. I agree that we probably won't be able to have a viable Mars colony in our lifetime. However, I do think that the pursuit of that goal will result in lots of useful inventions; just look at what SpaceX has accomplished already.
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  Musk aside, I think there is huge value in knowing how to sustain human life indefinitely without the earth. In fact, I think its inevitable that humans will need to leave earth at some point in our future. It may simply be as a result of population and overcrowding, it may be to flee war and persecution. I think there is a small chance we have already made changes to our atmosphere that make life here incompatible with humans. Its possible that within just a few hundred years, humans need to live entirely within climate controlled environments. If I had Musk level money I would be working on this now.
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  Making a reusable rocket is not the same thing as a sustainable settlement in a hostile environment. I mean sure ...why not other than it's a huge waste of resources.

macintux 2y ago

That is a wildly generous interpretation of his behavior and motivations.

fdschoeneman 2y ago
It's the most likely interpretation toe because it fits the known facts. Ungenerous interpretations don't make sense and don't fit the known facts. Musk isn't hiding his intentions. He's blasting them. He wants to make humans an interplanetary species. He wants his name to be associated with that for millennia. I don't see anything wrong with that and have trouble understanding why people hate him souch for it.
- Zanfa 2y ago
  > Musk isn't hiding his intentions. He's blasting them. He wants to make humans an interplanetary species. What people say about what and why they do things and why they actually do them are rarely correlated.
  - fdschoeneman 2y ago
    Okay. What are his intentions? Since you're a mind reader?
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      It ain't deep. He wants to influence American policty to get more money for whatever personal ideals he has. This isn't mind reading so much as reflecting on his actions from this year alone.
- kiba 2y ago
  That is not what people hate Musk for. They hate Musk because he's that unlikable.
  - fdschoeneman 2y ago

scottLobster 2y ago

Yeah, all his antics in buying/posting on Twitter and his pushing of the Cybertruck, BS androids, "hyperloop" etc are totally part of a grand mission in the service of mankind, and not the acts of an obsessive, socially mal-adjusted narcissist. Gwynne Shotwell is more responsible for SpaceX's operational success than Elon will ever be, she's clearly done a great job of managing up and letting him take the "glory" he so desperately yearns for, but all he really provided was the initial vision and money. Not to understate that contribution, but his supposed "brilliance" is pure marketing. We've seen what happens we he actually gets meaningful operational control of a company (Twitter) and a product (Cybertruck), and it isn't good.

Spooky23 2y ago

ROFL. Thanks for taking up the mantle for the poor multibillionaires. The poor guy is homeless, after all. There’s nothing more hilarious than folks devoting time to simp for people like this.

hilux 2y ago

Or maybe he just likes the attention, and he likes "winning," as measured by the size of his wealth. I can think of a prominent politician with the same qualities.