12 ms·

Elon Musk of SpaceX: The Goal is Mars

266 points by api 14y ago

api 14y ago
I cannot believe how right this guy is about absolutely every single thing.
- ultramundane8 14y ago
  I think that every time I hear him or read about him. It's astonishing and inspiring to see someone so successful have such an optimal perspective. And beyond that, he acts on it on a very large scale!
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  If it helps, I bet his ex-wife disagrees. :-) I'm a Musk fanboy myself, but there's always someone with a different opinion.
- smegel 14y ago
  Wasn't he responsible for PayPal? I'm not even sure a trip to Mars would make up for that.
  - designatedInit 14y ago
    Musk was responsible for PayPal. However, he wasn't responsible for the mess it turned in to. Musk even mentioned in an interview that he PayPal has gotten much worse than when it started out. Features that were in their minds since PayPal was founded still haven't been implemented to this day. It's kind of disappointing, seeing how it could have been a great device to speed up payments worldwide.
- mhartl 14y ago
  I'm a huge fan, but there is one big thing Musk might be wrong about: there's a substantial risk that his party-line views on CO2 will eventually look naive instead of visionary. I sincerely believe he's one of the good guys, though, so I hope history won't judge him too harshly for it. (Given HN's mostly party-line views on CO2, I hope I won't be judged too harshly for this comment.)
bceagle 14y ago
When I first watched the movie Prometheus my first thought was that there is no friggin way we are going to be traveling planets and have that level of advanced technology by 2089. After listening to Elon Musk and seeing the types of steps he is taking, perhaps Prometheus was not as far fetched as I originally thought.
- stevejabs 14y ago
  When you think about how far the world has come in the last 200 years, I can easily see that by 2050 we're doing manned deep space exploration. I could be wrong, but I'm pumped for the ride.
vetler 14y ago
Aim for the sky and you'll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you'll stay on the floor.
startupfounder 14y ago
"We choose to go to Mars. We choose to go to the Mars in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." -John F. Musk :) http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm
dfuego 14y ago
We need more entrepreneurs like this guys, really trying to solve hard problems that can secure the long lasting existence of humanity.
- kayoone 14y ago
  Id argue this can only be done by successfull serial entrepreneurs that are already free to do anything. Even Musk started small on the internet :) IMO Richard Branson and Bill Gates are of equal caliber.
- mongol 14y ago
  The long lasting existence of humanity requires a team effort. It is laughable to believe that an individual can do it.
  - arrogant 14y ago
    Our team needs leaders. Nobody said they had to work alone.
- chucknelson 14y ago
  I thought we needed more twitter-like services...
joelrunyon 14y ago
That gap between the effects that the work Musk is doing could have and the effects of most startups are attempting to do is incredible. He makes you want to step up whatever is it that you're working on.
- api 14y ago
  One of the more important meta things he's doing is calling BS on the dull Soviet apparatchik MBA mentality.
jere 14y ago
>The thing that got me started with SpaceX was the feeling of dismay — I just did not want Apollo to be our high-water mark. We do not want a future where we tell our children that this was the best we ever did. Glad someone has this motivation. http://xkcd.com/893/ http://xkcd.com/893/
harscoat 14y ago
Most inspiring capitalist on Earth. With the ressources he won on the last biz, he shoots further each time. Now he takes it where NASA & Government left it, and puts money & private interests at work to go for... Mars Edit: I am no native english speaker but seems to me Musk personifies the expression "pushing the envelope"
- finneusbarr 14y ago
  I agree with you completely. He is a truly remarkable man. As an aside, that is the correct use of the phrase, in case you were wondering.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
I'm a contrarian, a-social person. if everybody were running left, I'd run right. I completely despise hero-worship. It ruins people's critical-thinking skills. But if I were to have a living hero, it'd be Elon Musk. The man rocks. Seriously. The guy has nailed every interview I've ever seen of him. Having said that, I'm concerned that we focus a little too much on Space-X. As much as what Elon is doing is awesome, I'd feel better for the species if we had 3 or 4 competitors very close on his heels. I know that he has competitors, but as far as I know none of them seem to have the long term vision and dedication to reusable, scaleable architectures that he has. I don't want to trade having all of our eggs in a basket labeled "NASA" with having all of our eggs in a basket labeled "Space-X"
- danielweber 14y ago
  There are competitors, but none of them have delivered yet. Then again, SpaceX didn't really deliver until this year when it docked with ISS. Blue Origin is doing things, but I'm not sure it's not just a vanity project for Bezos. XCOR is working on some subsystems that are probably transplantable across different vendors. Bigelow seems to be working on payloads. Scaled Composites is trying something quite different from SpaceX and it remains to be seen which way is better (if there's even such a single answer to that). There are even smaller places like Armadillo, but it may be not meant to compete. I'm reading a lot in here, but I think Carmack sees it as an incubator for new space talent.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > I'm reading a lot in here, but I think Carmack sees it as an incubator for new space talent. I may be reading a lot in here, but are you saying that incubators are mostly just talent farms?
    - pseale 14y ago
      You are applying your YC bias to the word 'incubator'. in·cu·ba·tor/ˈinkyəˌbātər/ Noun: 1. An enclosed apparatus providing a controlled environment for the care of premature babies. 2. An apparatus used to hatch eggs or grow microorganisms under controlled conditions.
sho_hn 14y ago
> "There must be some ability to experiment to advance the state of the art. In the early days of aviation there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate. We don't want that — the public would not be accepting — but by the same token we can't have a situation where no deaths are ever allowed, because that would put innovation in a coffin too." Whoa. Talk about a cold equation. I can't make up my mind whether I'm impressed or creeped out that he's willing to go public with statements like that. He's definitely laying bare his thought process, right down to factoring in public reaction.
- api 14y ago
  So it's okay for people to risk their lives deep sea diving, climbing Everest, etc., but not here? It's not like the people doing this wouldn't know exactly what they were doing and how dangerous it was.
  - sho_hn 14y ago
    I'm really more surprised that he's willing to go public with the fact he considers "some deaths" an acceptable byproduct of what his company is doing, because if they do happen, it can and probably will be used to paint him callous and possibly to call him responsible. Basically, he's coming across as somewhat unapologetically nerdy - he's giving a pragmatic answer, prefering to be blunt rather than sugar-coating it. But it's a sort of short-term pragmaticism, because it can hurt what he's trying to do in the long run. I sort of like it, but at the same time it's so unusual for a man in his position that I can't help but feel surprised, and possibly put-off. It's more of a comment on how PR-optimized CEO behavior has conditioned my expectations and how Musk challenges them, I guess.
    - Symmetry 14y ago
      And if he had claimed it was perfectly safe and people died, what then? I think admitting the truth up front is the better long term strategy here.
    - Shivetya 14y ago
swalsh 14y ago
"Would you go to Mars? I would. The first flight would be risky; if I felt comfortable that the company's mission will continue, that my kids have grown up, then I'd be on the first mission." I love that the risk of death only frightens him from a view point of responsibilities. As the father of his children, and apparently the father of humanities future in space.
- swalsh 14y ago
  May I ask why I'm being downvoted here? What rule of HN did I violate?
  - maxgaudin 14y ago
    Not sure. I was going to post this same quote to comment on it. I can only imagine what it must feel like to want to be the first man on Mars and actually have the ability to do it.
    - RyanMcGreal 14y ago
      Reminds me of the plot of Heinlein's The Man Who Sold The Moon, in which space-loving entrepreneur Delos D. Harriman builds a company big and capable enough to send a manned rocket to the moon, only to find out that his board of directors won't let him go.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Downvotes aren't necessarily punishment; they mean "I want less of this on HN". It might just be that people don't think your comment contributes to the type of discussion they want to have.
- Florin_Andrei 14y ago
  To quote from another interview with him: "It would be cool to be born on Earth, and die on Mars." (of old age, I assume)
  - 14y ago
MikeCapone 14y ago
I love how lucid and articulate Musk comes across as in these interviews. He's a great spokesperson for entrepreneurs and technologists, and he's cool to boot. I'm sure a generation of kids will be inspired by his example.
hxf148 14y ago
Go to Mars. I'll at least watch the video. We need the wild west with space helmets. We need big impossible goals. Or else it's just us here talking and warring over one marble running out of raw materials. I am encouraged by the recent progresses. The upcoming rover landing is a big test. If they can master robotic rocket landings and material transport on the surface we are making progress. My wife has set a rule that no children we have are allowed to leave the planet before they are 18.
wallflower 14y ago
I saw Buzz Aldrin talk. He said that we have to make three successful manned missions to Mars and back before we can think of colonizing it. Three indicates we have solved the fundamental issues of safety, sanity [1], and propulsion. I believe Elon Musk and SpaceX will do it. [1] Russia has begun training astronauts for the 500-day project by experimenting with placing them in isolation
adelivet 14y ago
What Elon Musl do with SpaceX is cool but he would be more interesting for all the people if he stayed in Tesla and has the same vision!
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  I watched an interview ("fireside chat", they called it) of him early in July, and he was talking about this very thing. Basically he said that he loves both SpaceX and Tesla, but he realizes that SpaceX has the potential for much greater impact on humanity as a whole than Tesla. He also said that, for this reason, if there ever comes a time when he must focus his energy on one company, it would be SpaceX.
Dn_Ab 14y ago
One viewpoint I haven't see talked about is that Mars+ not only reduces extinction dangers via redundancy but also stabilizes Earth's geo-political landscape by extending the notion of local. A widening of the overton window. Mars could be a place to start again, to get things right without all the historical cruft. And the culture, the kind of person who would take that kind of risk has to be interesting. We have examples of this turning out well from the past. Back on Earth, this would have a uniting effect by completely changing the playing field. I expect Fox News would call for something to be done about those anarcho-socialist martians and the superiority of pure Earthicans. Paranoid military planners will be concerned about scenarios where Mars attacks earth, especially with the outflow of all those entrepreneurial, intelligent, individualistic, explorer psyches. Sounds dreary right? But at last we would be thinking at a global level!
- mongol 14y ago
  I don't believe in this at all. I think it is probable that China start to colonize Mars before US has the ability to. Next, they start to claim area after area, while also dominating the earth economy. It will not stabilize the geo-political landscape - it will complicate it.
  - Dn_Ab 14y ago
    Perhaps. Or more likely private entities end up on mars first. One of us or someone in between is right. I hope however things end up being is close to my viewpoint =).
  - stuff4ben 14y ago
    you have to wonder if the US govt has thought of that. Fear of another nation has spurred great advances in technology.
  - Androsynth 14y ago
    I'm an American, but I don't feel US has the god-given right to be the only super-power in the solar system for the next few hundred years. If China establishes colonies, good for them. When England colonized America, it began the downfall of Spains empire (more or less), but no one is crying that Spain didn't become the global power it 'should' have become.
Cushman 14y ago
As cool of a guy as Elon seems like, I find myself way more excited about what Planetary Resources is doing. I get the space tourism aspect. People want to try new things, and especially things no one has ever done before. But that aside, I don't really get why we, as a species, should be expending such enormous effort trying to send a few live human specimens off the planet at this point-- not while we can develop totally awesome robotics technology that leverages the resources of outer space to usher in the post-scarcity era right here, in the totally best place in the universe for a human being to live. I know we don't have to choose one or the other, but I wish someone with Elon's charisma was out there pulling for the "Space sucks, send robots" angle.
- Goronmon 14y ago
  I think it depends on your end goal regarding space travel. If your end goal is to mine resources in space, then yes, using humans seems like a waste of time and money. However, if your goals are more along the lines of colonizing other planets, or setting up research stations on other planets, than dealing with issues around transporting humans through space is more important.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    At the moment, isn't the bottleneck our colonization ability, rather than our transport ability? We've gotten to the moon multiple times, but nobody has solid plans to build a permanent moon colony.
- DavidSJ 14y ago
  Robots still need a launch vehicle.
- api 14y ago
  I don't think Planetary Resources has any chance without major breakthroughs in launch and propulsion.
- Florin_Andrei 14y ago
  We need both. And more.
aswanson 14y ago
I remember having a series of books as a kid, iirc they were titled, "world of tommorow", or something like that. They talked about big-vision things; fusion, transportation, asteroid mining, and terraforming Mars by planting genetically-engineering algae on it's polar caps. Glad to see us finally taking steps toward that vision.
ryanklee 14y ago
> there's not been a good Mars movie Pfffttt.... Total Recall?!
pjscott 14y ago
The next-page links are small and easy to miss, so here's the full article on one page: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3336380,full.column http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-mo...
eric-hu 14y ago
Single page article: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3336380,full.column http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-mo...
hexagonal 14y ago
Bah, Mars. I'd rather live on the Moon. Less gravity, closer to Earth. Both places require pressure suits, but the Moon is a hard vacuum, which means you can do the usual vacuum industry tricks, while Mars has just enough atomosphere to rule out vacuum applications, but not enough atmosphere to breathe. Maybe in five thousand years we will have terraformed a breathable atmosphere, but in the near future it will be a neat place to plant a flag, like the top of Everest, but certainly not a place you'd like to live.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  I think its actually harder to live long-term on the moon than mars, although much easier to get too. With no atmosphere and a 28 day sun cycle, there's lots of radiation and heat to deal with along with that 14 day night where solar doesn't work. The rovers that are on mars right now wouldn't last long on the moon at all.
netcan 14y ago
A couple of observations: 1 Where will that electricity come from? - I think solar will be the largest source [he owns a solar company, SolarCity]. With someone like Elon Musk it's believable that "he owns a solar company" is not a disclosure of bias, it's putting his money where his mouth is. 2 He doesn't come off as ideological at all (eg government vs corporate technology) except where relevant to his goal. He's trying to make electric cars & go to mars. Those are the areas where he's thrying to have an impact, here he has strong opinions. Otherwise, he lives in the world as it is. He doesn't get baited into comments on the political, financial or regulatory structure beyond where it applies to the stuff he's doing
Nevaeh 14y ago
>"I think it's really important that we stop sending college and graduate students back to their home countries. If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion. There's certain special skills, especially in advanced engineering, that are the limiting factor in creating new companies; we send these people home after training them in our graduate schools. One of the toughest things I've found is to recruit top-notch manufacturing talent. That's where I've had to go overseas. For a few decades, it just wasn't where the smartest kids in the class in America went. We had far too many smart people in the U.S. go into finance and law!" Interesting. I thought only U.S. citizens were allowed to work for SpaceX, but Elon actually had to go overseas to recruit top-notch manufacturing talent. With the introduction of multiple bills recently to retain foreign talent such as the STEM Jobs Act, Startup Act 2.0, STARS Act, The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, it's good to see some progress made to solve this problem.

266 points by api 14y ago

api 14y ago

I cannot believe how right this guy is about absolutely every single thing.

ultramundane8 14y ago
I think that every time I hear him or read about him. It's astonishing and inspiring to see someone so successful have such an optimal perspective. And beyond that, he acts on it on a very large scale!
waterlesscloud 14y ago
If it helps, I bet his ex-wife disagrees. :-) I'm a Musk fanboy myself, but there's always someone with a different opinion.
smegel 14y ago
Wasn't he responsible for PayPal? I'm not even sure a trip to Mars would make up for that.
- designatedInit 14y ago
  Musk was responsible for PayPal. However, he wasn't responsible for the mess it turned in to. Musk even mentioned in an interview that he PayPal has gotten much worse than when it started out. Features that were in their minds since PayPal was founded still haven't been implemented to this day. It's kind of disappointing, seeing how it could have been a great device to speed up payments worldwide.
mhartl 14y ago
I'm a huge fan, but there is one big thing Musk might be wrong about: there's a substantial risk that his party-line views on CO2 will eventually look naive instead of visionary. I sincerely believe he's one of the good guys, though, so I hope history won't judge him too harshly for it. (Given HN's mostly party-line views on CO2, I hope I won't be judged too harshly for this comment.)

bceagle 14y ago

When I first watched the movie Prometheus my first thought was that there is no friggin way we are going to be traveling planets and have that level of advanced technology by 2089. After listening to Elon Musk and seeing the types of steps he is taking, perhaps Prometheus was not as far fetched as I originally thought.

stevejabs 14y ago
When you think about how far the world has come in the last 200 years, I can easily see that by 2050 we're doing manned deep space exploration. I could be wrong, but I'm pumped for the ride.

vetler 14y ago

Aim for the sky and you'll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you'll stay on the floor.

startupfounder 14y ago

"We choose to go to Mars. We choose to go to the Mars in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." -John F. Musk :) http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

dfuego 14y ago

We need more entrepreneurs like this guys, really trying to solve hard problems that can secure the long lasting existence of humanity.

kayoone 14y ago
Id argue this can only be done by successfull serial entrepreneurs that are already free to do anything. Even Musk started small on the internet :) IMO Richard Branson and Bill Gates are of equal caliber.
mongol 14y ago
The long lasting existence of humanity requires a team effort. It is laughable to believe that an individual can do it.
- arrogant 14y ago
  Our team needs leaders. Nobody said they had to work alone.
chucknelson 14y ago
I thought we needed more twitter-like services...

joelrunyon 14y ago

That gap between the effects that the work Musk is doing could have and the effects of most startups are attempting to do is incredible. He makes you want to step up whatever is it that you're working on.

api 14y ago
One of the more important meta things he's doing is calling BS on the dull Soviet apparatchik MBA mentality.

jere 14y ago

>The thing that got me started with SpaceX was the feeling of dismay — I just did not want Apollo to be our high-water mark. We do not want a future where we tell our children that this was the best we ever did. Glad someone has this motivation. http://xkcd.com/893/ http://xkcd.com/893/

harscoat 14y ago

Most inspiring capitalist on Earth. With the ressources he won on the last biz, he shoots further each time. Now he takes it where NASA & Government left it, and puts money & private interests at work to go for... Mars Edit: I am no native english speaker but seems to me Musk personifies the expression "pushing the envelope"

finneusbarr 14y ago
I agree with you completely. He is a truly remarkable man. As an aside, that is the correct use of the phrase, in case you were wondering.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

I'm a contrarian, a-social person. if everybody were running left, I'd run right. I completely despise hero-worship. It ruins people's critical-thinking skills. But if I were to have a living hero, it'd be Elon Musk. The man rocks. Seriously. The guy has nailed every interview I've ever seen of him. Having said that, I'm concerned that we focus a little too much on Space-X. As much as what Elon is doing is awesome, I'd feel better for the species if we had 3 or 4 competitors very close on his heels. I know that he has competitors, but as far as I know none of them seem to have the long term vision and dedication to reusable, scaleable architectures that he has. I don't want to trade having all of our eggs in a basket labeled "NASA" with having all of our eggs in a basket labeled "Space-X"

danielweber 14y ago
There are competitors, but none of them have delivered yet. Then again, SpaceX didn't really deliver until this year when it docked with ISS. Blue Origin is doing things, but I'm not sure it's not just a vanity project for Bezos. XCOR is working on some subsystems that are probably transplantable across different vendors. Bigelow seems to be working on payloads. Scaled Composites is trying something quite different from SpaceX and it remains to be seen which way is better (if there's even such a single answer to that). There are even smaller places like Armadillo, but it may be not meant to compete. I'm reading a lot in here, but I think Carmack sees it as an incubator for new space talent.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > I'm reading a lot in here, but I think Carmack sees it as an incubator for new space talent. I may be reading a lot in here, but are you saying that incubators are mostly just talent farms?
  - pseale 14y ago
    You are applying your YC bias to the word 'incubator'. in·cu·ba·tor/ˈinkyəˌbātər/ Noun: 1. An enclosed apparatus providing a controlled environment for the care of premature babies. 2. An apparatus used to hatch eggs or grow microorganisms under controlled conditions.

sho_hn 14y ago

> "There must be some ability to experiment to advance the state of the art. In the early days of aviation there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate. We don't want that — the public would not be accepting — but by the same token we can't have a situation where no deaths are ever allowed, because that would put innovation in a coffin too." Whoa. Talk about a cold equation. I can't make up my mind whether I'm impressed or creeped out that he's willing to go public with statements like that. He's definitely laying bare his thought process, right down to factoring in public reaction.

api 14y ago
So it's okay for people to risk their lives deep sea diving, climbing Everest, etc., but not here? It's not like the people doing this wouldn't know exactly what they were doing and how dangerous it was.
- sho_hn 14y ago
  I'm really more surprised that he's willing to go public with the fact he considers "some deaths" an acceptable byproduct of what his company is doing, because if they do happen, it can and probably will be used to paint him callous and possibly to call him responsible. Basically, he's coming across as somewhat unapologetically nerdy - he's giving a pragmatic answer, prefering to be blunt rather than sugar-coating it. But it's a sort of short-term pragmaticism, because it can hurt what he's trying to do in the long run. I sort of like it, but at the same time it's so unusual for a man in his position that I can't help but feel surprised, and possibly put-off. It's more of a comment on how PR-optimized CEO behavior has conditioned my expectations and how Musk challenges them, I guess.
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    And if he had claimed it was perfectly safe and people died, what then? I think admitting the truth up front is the better long term strategy here.
  - Shivetya 14y ago

swalsh 14y ago

"Would you go to Mars? I would. The first flight would be risky; if I felt comfortable that the company's mission will continue, that my kids have grown up, then I'd be on the first mission." I love that the risk of death only frightens him from a view point of responsibilities. As the father of his children, and apparently the father of humanities future in space.

swalsh 14y ago
May I ask why I'm being downvoted here? What rule of HN did I violate?
- maxgaudin 14y ago
  Not sure. I was going to post this same quote to comment on it. I can only imagine what it must feel like to want to be the first man on Mars and actually have the ability to do it.
  - RyanMcGreal 14y ago
    Reminds me of the plot of Heinlein's The Man Who Sold The Moon, in which space-loving entrepreneur Delos D. Harriman builds a company big and capable enough to send a manned rocket to the moon, only to find out that his board of directors won't let him go.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Downvotes aren't necessarily punishment; they mean "I want less of this on HN". It might just be that people don't think your comment contributes to the type of discussion they want to have.
Florin_Andrei 14y ago
To quote from another interview with him: "It would be cool to be born on Earth, and die on Mars." (of old age, I assume)
- 14y ago

MikeCapone 14y ago

I love how lucid and articulate Musk comes across as in these interviews. He's a great spokesperson for entrepreneurs and technologists, and he's cool to boot. I'm sure a generation of kids will be inspired by his example.

hxf148 14y ago

Go to Mars. I'll at least watch the video. We need the wild west with space helmets. We need big impossible goals. Or else it's just us here talking and warring over one marble running out of raw materials. I am encouraged by the recent progresses. The upcoming rover landing is a big test. If they can master robotic rocket landings and material transport on the surface we are making progress. My wife has set a rule that no children we have are allowed to leave the planet before they are 18.

wallflower 14y ago

I saw Buzz Aldrin talk. He said that we have to make three successful manned missions to Mars and back before we can think of colonizing it. Three indicates we have solved the fundamental issues of safety, sanity [1], and propulsion. I believe Elon Musk and SpaceX will do it. [1] Russia has begun training astronauts for the 500-day project by experimenting with placing them in isolation

adelivet 14y ago

What Elon Musl do with SpaceX is cool but he would be more interesting for all the people if he stayed in Tesla and has the same vision!

enraged_camel 14y ago
I watched an interview ("fireside chat", they called it) of him early in July, and he was talking about this very thing. Basically he said that he loves both SpaceX and Tesla, but he realizes that SpaceX has the potential for much greater impact on humanity as a whole than Tesla. He also said that, for this reason, if there ever comes a time when he must focus his energy on one company, it would be SpaceX.

Dn_Ab 14y ago

One viewpoint I haven't see talked about is that Mars+ not only reduces extinction dangers via redundancy but also stabilizes Earth's geo-political landscape by extending the notion of local. A widening of the overton window. Mars could be a place to start again, to get things right without all the historical cruft. And the culture, the kind of person who would take that kind of risk has to be interesting. We have examples of this turning out well from the past. Back on Earth, this would have a uniting effect by completely changing the playing field. I expect Fox News would call for something to be done about those anarcho-socialist martians and the superiority of pure Earthicans. Paranoid military planners will be concerned about scenarios where Mars attacks earth, especially with the outflow of all those entrepreneurial, intelligent, individualistic, explorer psyches. Sounds dreary right? But at last we would be thinking at a global level!

mongol 14y ago
I don't believe in this at all. I think it is probable that China start to colonize Mars before US has the ability to. Next, they start to claim area after area, while also dominating the earth economy. It will not stabilize the geo-political landscape - it will complicate it.
- Dn_Ab 14y ago
  Perhaps. Or more likely private entities end up on mars first. One of us or someone in between is right. I hope however things end up being is close to my viewpoint =).
- stuff4ben 14y ago
  you have to wonder if the US govt has thought of that. Fear of another nation has spurred great advances in technology.
- Androsynth 14y ago
  I'm an American, but I don't feel US has the god-given right to be the only super-power in the solar system for the next few hundred years. If China establishes colonies, good for them. When England colonized America, it began the downfall of Spains empire (more or less), but no one is crying that Spain didn't become the global power it 'should' have become.

Cushman 14y ago

As cool of a guy as Elon seems like, I find myself way more excited about what Planetary Resources is doing. I get the space tourism aspect. People want to try new things, and especially things no one has ever done before. But that aside, I don't really get why we, as a species, should be expending such enormous effort trying to send a few live human specimens off the planet at this point-- not while we can develop totally awesome robotics technology that leverages the resources of outer space to usher in the post-scarcity era right here, in the totally best place in the universe for a human being to live. I know we don't have to choose one or the other, but I wish someone with Elon's charisma was out there pulling for the "Space sucks, send robots" angle.

Goronmon 14y ago
I think it depends on your end goal regarding space travel. If your end goal is to mine resources in space, then yes, using humans seems like a waste of time and money. However, if your goals are more along the lines of colonizing other planets, or setting up research stations on other planets, than dealing with issues around transporting humans through space is more important.
- _delirium 14y ago
  At the moment, isn't the bottleneck our colonization ability, rather than our transport ability? We've gotten to the moon multiple times, but nobody has solid plans to build a permanent moon colony.
DavidSJ 14y ago
Robots still need a launch vehicle.
api 14y ago
I don't think Planetary Resources has any chance without major breakthroughs in launch and propulsion.
Florin_Andrei 14y ago
We need both. And more.

aswanson 14y ago

I remember having a series of books as a kid, iirc they were titled, "world of tommorow", or something like that. They talked about big-vision things; fusion, transportation, asteroid mining, and terraforming Mars by planting genetically-engineering algae on it's polar caps. Glad to see us finally taking steps toward that vision.

ryanklee 14y ago

> there's not been a good Mars movie Pfffttt.... Total Recall?!

pjscott 14y ago

The next-page links are small and easy to miss, so here's the full article on one page: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3336380,full.column http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-mo...

eric-hu 14y ago

Single page article: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3336380,full.column http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-mo...

hexagonal 14y ago

Bah, Mars. I'd rather live on the Moon. Less gravity, closer to Earth. Both places require pressure suits, but the Moon is a hard vacuum, which means you can do the usual vacuum industry tricks, while Mars has just enough atomosphere to rule out vacuum applications, but not enough atmosphere to breathe. Maybe in five thousand years we will have terraformed a breathable atmosphere, but in the near future it will be a neat place to plant a flag, like the top of Everest, but certainly not a place you'd like to live.

noonespecial 14y ago
I think its actually harder to live long-term on the moon than mars, although much easier to get too. With no atmosphere and a 28 day sun cycle, there's lots of radiation and heat to deal with along with that 14 day night where solar doesn't work. The rovers that are on mars right now wouldn't last long on the moon at all.

netcan 14y ago

A couple of observations: 1 Where will that electricity come from? - I think solar will be the largest source [he owns a solar company, SolarCity]. With someone like Elon Musk it's believable that "he owns a solar company" is not a disclosure of bias, it's putting his money where his mouth is. 2 He doesn't come off as ideological at all (eg government vs corporate technology) except where relevant to his goal. He's trying to make electric cars & go to mars. Those are the areas where he's thrying to have an impact, here he has strong opinions. Otherwise, he lives in the world as it is. He doesn't get baited into comments on the political, financial or regulatory structure beyond where it applies to the stuff he's doing

Nevaeh 14y ago

>"I think it's really important that we stop sending college and graduate students back to their home countries. If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion. There's certain special skills, especially in advanced engineering, that are the limiting factor in creating new companies; we send these people home after training them in our graduate schools. One of the toughest things I've found is to recruit top-notch manufacturing talent. That's where I've had to go overseas. For a few decades, it just wasn't where the smartest kids in the class in America went. We had far too many smart people in the U.S. go into finance and law!" Interesting. I thought only U.S. citizens were allowed to work for SpaceX, but Elon actually had to go overseas to recruit top-notch manufacturing talent. With the introduction of multiple bills recently to retain foreign talent such as the STEM Jobs Act, Startup Act 2.0, STARS Act, The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, it's good to see some progress made to solve this problem.