Elon Columbus
Who owns Mars?
Those of us geeks who love Professor Farnsworth of Planet Express knows how hard he struggles against the mindlessness of Earthlings. There have been numerous occasions upon which he wishes he could be beamed away, even though he owns an FTL spacecraft. If intelligent life is spread out through the galaxy, so is idiocy. So what indeed is the point of ‘making us an interplanetary species’?
It’s what species do, them what got the dosh.
Heretics of Earth
I’ve read way too much sci-fi in my life, owing to the fact that I got my pre-pubescent mitts on Arthur C. Clarke before my parents could afford a piano teacher. Even so, there haven’t been many I can recall when human astronauts weren’t primarily on government missions. So what happens when Musk is told what he can and cannot do on Mars. We’ve already seen him exhibit that unique sense of humor in his confrontation with censorious Brazilian authorities. “They can shake their fists at the sky”. Yeah I love it. And yes his is a very different case than that of Telegram’s. The update is that the Russian CEO has very likely cut a deal with France.
In my last ode to pessimism I said that possession is the law. And until the 2049’ers can afford a rocket ride, the Leland Stanfords and Levi Strausses of the future are going to cut their deals. Author Daniel Suarez has put together such a plausible scenario in his books {Delta-V, Critical Mass} complete with the sort of dirtside political shit-show which is most likely to make more of us want to stowaway on the next rocket leaving Texas. So there will be a super-duper land grab.
But my take on this is very different, especially since I [just] started reading Dante’s Divine Comedy and got a new sense of the idea of Heresy. That is to say, heresy in Dante’s Inferno is the sin of being an obnoxious spoilsport. A troll. Someone who wants to piss in the punchbowl. The heretic cannot imagine anything being right in this world if it’s not going the way they envisioned it should. Little Greta is the perfect heretic. Elon Musk’s mission to Mars is entirely heretical, as is Professor Farnsworth’s. Musk would occupy that same level of the Inferno as R’as al-Ghul because in principle, neither would bother to repent their determined abandonment of Earth should the world burn, whether or not they started the fire. Both would say “See? I told you so.” In Hell.
I want Musk to redeem himself by delivering Space Age Two’s technology to earthlings. His track record is actually fairly decent. Well, he did prove micropayments with PayPal could work while American banks are still using AS/400s. He also has improved R&D in the battery world. Does your city still allow gas-powered leaf blowers? I’ve got a device that has a battery that makes jumper cables obsolete, and I can plug my phone into it. He built the Supercharger network and he designed a 48 volt system for auto electronics and gave the design away for free. Not bad.
Yes, he has capitalized on green hype and I think about it every time I have lunch at my favorite beachside cafe here in SoCal. The lots are full of Tesla vehicles. But on the whole, he is our Andrew Carnegie, whom I imagine was hated just as much as people hate that Elon Musk has literally told people to fuck off on national television. Again, here’s another set of books for your reference. I read Dick Feynman when I was young. {Surely, You’re Joking, What Do You Care} It probably shows.
Dual Use
If I haven’t said it already, the first time I saw the Cybertruck, I thought ‘Martian Vehicle’. It was so obvious to me. Why else would he do bulletproof glass? Anyway, SpaceX, Twitter, Tesla, all of that is chock full of dual use technology. And honestly, I’m a bit confused on why he hasn’t nabbed the X ticker symbol out from under US Steel. I mean he could have purchased that company without breaking a sweat. Probably too many hidebound regulations and captured skills & markets.
But here’s the real thing I hope for, because quite frankly, I don’t much care for Mars. I think I can hide out in Morocco, because I know that sooner or later, SpaceX is going to have to figure out nuclear power, hydroponics, lightweight space suits and habitats that can stand ambient Martian temperatures between 80 in the daytime and -100 at at night. Anybody who can do that can build a city in the middle of the Sahara, and that’s exactly what I expect him to do. Or the Namib. Or the middle of Greenland. Places nobody wants to go now. But how many years until Starlink coverage is everywhere? How many years before the relative idiots at Spectrum get their networks hacked by the CCP and Starlink remains pristine?
It didn’t take a genius to bet on IBM in 1970 even before there was a such thing as a personal computer. Who would bet against Musk’s enterprises today? I say the best dual use technologies have yet to come, and they’re not all about digital, thank god. He bends steel. He generates electricity. He does economies of scale in manufacturing. He does efficient engineering design. He even pisses off Wokies. Which is why he’ll be hated even more than Christopher Columbus. Hmm. Maybe there will be a town called Reevesville.
I’m not a fanboy of Musk. He’s no Bruce McCandless. But he’s an industrialist alive an kicking ass against a tide of mediocrity. I don’t doubt we’ll get to Mars, for what it’s worth. It’s the legacy of Musk’s companies that will be the ultimate testament. It’s not all consumer products. It’s real engineering. In the same way that Apple couldn’t build a commercial database to save its soul, there were things that Steve Jobs just couldn’t see. That damnable heretic hired the CEO of Pepsi to run Apple, fer chrissake. iPhones may be the Marlboro of this era. How long before they come with a warning label. “Smartphones are addictive”. “Quitting social media now greatly reduces serious risks to your mental health.” Apple has us all smoking. Well, not just Apple. Tesla cars are safer than the ones they replaced. You can’t say that about most consumer products.
Musk on the other hand, clearly understands he’s not running a cheap charter cruiseline for Queen Isabella. When he gets to the red planet… Oh snap. The price of iron will drop. Who needs US Steel? But long before that, we should have a revolution in extreme environmental housing.
That’s what I’m talking about.
Super Duper Land Grab
While there may be many who want to stake some claim on Mars, I very much like the idea of Morocco, still. Or who knows, maybe Juneau or somewhere in Saudi Arabia or even West Texas. The right government makes for the right environment when there is global connectivity and drone delivery. Housing won’t be the issue, at least not for retirees and people who actually like lighthouses. With the right technologies, we can make New Worlds here quite a bit more habitable than the Roanoke Colony. That’s going to be the hardship of the New Martians, not for old bastards like me. So I’m looking forward to occupying ridiculously cheap land that today nobody cares about on this planet. The one with lots of oxygen and water and dogs and bacteria and… Oh wait.
Nah nevermind. Mitochondria.