
Elon Musk's Ticket to Nowhere - altstar
http://www.realclearfuture.com/articles/2016/09/28/elon_musks_ticket_to_nowhere_111943.html
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smoyer
I simply don't care how realistic some pundit thinks Musk's plans are ... Musk
seems to find a way to accomplish his goals and also makes it clear those
goals are intended to better society in some way. Naysayers have an easy job
since they can pooh-pooh an idea and if they're wrong, they're simply
forgotten. I bet the authors record for predicting success is far less
impressive than Musk's record of actually accomplishing hard things.

And when it comes down to it, I for one am happy to see someone (Musk in this
case but everyone else is welcome to step up) promoting visionary goals with
this kind of passion. Watching the Apollo missions as a youngster led me
towards a career in engineering but I have to admit most of todays focus on
"disruptive applications" leaves me jaded. Will the next revolutionary to-do
list really cause the transcendence of mankind? Musk estimates it will cost
$10bn but if the VCs had any long-term vision there would be twenty times that
promised towards this goal.

Note: if politician's in the U.S. had any vision they'd earmark half the
defense budget towards science and medicine goals - We choose to go to mars in
this decade and do the other things - not because they are easy but because
they are hard.

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gremlinsinc
I agreed, people laughed at him when he went to Russia to spend his paypal
money to buy rockets. Everyone counted him out and he almost did lose
everything in 2008. They were really lean, and down to their last buck til the
last minute NASA deal was landed, and the rest is history as they say. He's a
genius and has a sense of perseverance that we haven't seen since the Wright
Brothers -- two other people who were laughed at and ridiculed. I could
imagine the author of this blog post writing the same thing about their stupid
flying contraption.

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RivieraKid
He's a pretty impressive enterpreneur, but haven't seen any evidence for the
genius claim. Von Neumann, Gauss or Einstein were geniuses.

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avmich
Korolev would probably get a Nobel prize if he wouldn't be shielded behind
Soviet secrecy around his rocket program.

Korolev however had a mighty state backing his plans which he skillfully
played. Musk does approximately similar things on the commercial playing
field. His pace of achievements and the range of his programs shouldn't be
underestimated.

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WheelsAtLarge
Hold on a sec. This article basically says that we need to wait until a plan
makes sense. Well a trip to Mars will never make sense financially and it's
easy to find fault in all plans. Planning a trip to the Mojave desert makes
better sense. It's cheaper, no one will die and we know there's life there.

A trip to Mars is a stretch goal that we need to start as a species. We know
that our lifetime as a species is limited on earth so the sooner we start
figuring out how to get off the planet the better. Yes, we might fail but then
we'll have to try again and again.

Musk has made himself the spokesman for that task. No one else seems to want
the job. Yes, he's a dreamer and might be overselling the task but that's what
we need. We need to start. I can tell you that if we never try it will never
happen.

My hope is that he becomes so rich that he owns all of Mar's resources. Yes,
he'll own them for a bit but it means mankind has made a large step forward.
Go Musk!

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RivieraKid
Mars is like Antarctica or Sahara, but much worse, why would people want to
live their lives there? I can understand scientists or perhaps adventurers
living there for a 2 year shift. But why would anyone want to spend time there
if it's a worse place to live than Earth in almost every regard?

By the way, I'm a big SpaceX fan and I hope there will be an outpost on Mars,
but a self-sustaining city is just unrealistic, sadly.

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WheelsAtLarge
I see your point. It's not necessarily a matter of living there. People would
hate it and it's unrealistic with current technology. Right now, it's a matter
of developing the technology to be able to travel and live outside our planet.
We're really talking about technology that will take hundreds of years to
develop - if at all.

If it's ever going to happen we need to move forward. Going to the moon was
great but we've stalled since then.

We talk about jobs ending. We'll space research and development is a fertile
ground for new jobs.

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RivieraKid
Yeah, I'm a big supporter of the Mars plan, it's just that I can't convince
myself that a big colony is possible any time soon.

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RivieraKid
> A SpaceX rocket goes boom, and you're not quite sure why? Time to announce
> the plan to colonize Mars.

This is just plain wrong, the Mars announcement was planned for a long time.

Also, Mars colonization was the reason he founded SpaceX.

However, the article raises a good point, colony on Mars is unlikely, because
Earth is a much better place to live. Same reason why there's no big city in
Antarctica or under the ocean - it's just a very shitty place to live. And
Mars is much, much worse, plus it's hard to get there or back.

So, although I _really_ enjoy the idea of a self-sufficient city on Mars, it
just seems extremely unlikely.

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LizardLarry
Earth is old and baggaged with stratified classes.

Humans like distinction above their peers, even at the cost of security.

The dream of Mars is the dream to stake a rentier position in a growing social
hiearchy.

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cjlars
And yet, roughly 40,000 people make the trip to Everest Base Camp each year --
another desolate and inhospitable place with no tangible economy. An economist
might say this is done for 'tourism', but I prefer Mallory's famous insight
that people go 'because it's there'.

Ever since we came down from the trees, humans have been setting out on
reckless and suicidal journeys for which there is no hope of return. Humanity
spread over nearly the entire planet and found its way to countless isolated
pacific islands before recorded history even began.

When the price and the science finally line up, there will be no shortage of
wealthy old kooks happy to pony up the funds, accept the risk, and set off for
the solar system's most exotic retirement.

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gremlinsinc
Really colonization/terraforming would be nice, but if that never happens --
think of all the technologies like CAT Scans that will be developed while we
'try' to terraform Mars. As global warming gets worst we might even discover a
cure for issues with our own planet by looking for solutions into making Mars
more livable.

Scientific discovery whether it fails or succeeds will never hurt us or set us
back, it's failure to keep momentum going that will. Space tech hasn't really
evolved like other industries in the past 40 years because interest has dried
up. It's now starting to see a revival, and I for one am excited, and would
like to take a space trip on the ITS around the solar system which may be a
possibility.

If I can't go to mars, I'd still love a chance to go see the rings of Saturn
from a space hotel. That would be worth every dollar, and crashed rocket.

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oxide
That's an excellent point, one I think is often overlooked.

I cannot know how many discoveries were founded on the backs of some other
line of research, but what I do know is that things are discovered during the
course of research.

Imagine the kind of applications the research into a livable Mars might yield.
Our own infrastructure, agriculture and more could stand to benefit quite a
bit here at home from the cash we invest looking towards the Red planet.

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webvrvw
This is the kind of miserable critic who asks "yes but what's the practical
use of it ?" when confronted with an exciting new scientific discovery. A fun-
squashing, party-pooping, 1-dimensional, monochromatic-minded _coin_.

Humans are born for adventure. It's who we are. We explore and we discover and
we don't need to have practical reasons. Often it's only in retrospect that
the utility of an adventure becomes evident, you simply can't know everything
in advance and it would be no fun if you could. This is exactly the sort of
(informed and calculated) leap of faith our species needs right now, poised as
it is on the verge of possible armageddon.

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maxander
No one, including Musk, says that colonizing Mars is a "good" idea
economically or practically. This guy's arguments are fundamentally missing
the point.

But here's one advantage Mars _does_ have- it's far from other humans. And
humans, not asteroid strikes or supervolcanoes, are the most worrying
potential source of the catastrophic events we want to protect our
civilization from.

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wrs
Article fails to define "worthwhile", thus rendering its many value judgments
moot.

Article refutes "existential risk to human life" with "billions of years of
supporting life", which is a non-sequitur. "Thousands of years of supporting
human life" isn't quite so convincing...

