
Elon Musk of SpaceX: The Goal is Mars - api
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3838907.column
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DanielBMarkham
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"

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _But if I were to have a living hero, it'd be Elon Musk._

I _do_ have a living hero, and he _is_ Elon Musk.

Has anyone noticed the parallels with Schwarzenegger, and the differences?

When Arnold was a young athlete, someone asked him "so what do you want to do
with your life?" He said: "I'd like to be a bodybuilding world champion. Then
I'd like to become an actor. Then I'd like to do politics."

He nailed every single one of those goals. But please notice those are the
ultimate goals of the individual ego (more precisely, of the male ego):
physical power, fame, money, and political power. He's basically Conan in real
life.

Now, Elon Musk also made a list of the most important issues to solve - the
ones most important for the planet, for humanity as a whole, not for the
little individual ego. We need a clean environment, we need energy, and we
need to put some of our eggs in another basket.

And then he went on knocking them off the list one by one. First PayPal, to
achieve financial independence. Then Tesla Motors (good for the environment),
Solar City (energy), and SpaceX (Mars colonization). And he's willing to risk
his own life to achieve those goals.

I've no doubt, Elon Musk is up there among the greatest. If he makes it to
Mars, one day kids will learn his name from the history books.

~~~
evolve2k
It does seem all very noble except when you remember that SpaceX sees itself
as a military weapons company. In almost every interview, amongst the
background hype, he makes a mention of defence.

~~~
Tsagadai
Rocketry is a dual-use technology; it can be used for good (satellites,
exploration, science) or for launching explosives around the world. Paints are
also a dual-use technology; it can be used for good (art) or evil (it can get
you high).

Do we label every paint manufacturer a drug dealer because they have a product
that can be misused?

~~~
buu700
_evil (it can get you high)_

-_-. You could have come up with a less politically charged example than that (perhaps any arbitrary blunt, heavy, or sharp object?).

~~~
PerryCox
He could have chose graffiti, but regardless his still had a very valid point.

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swalsh
"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
May I ask why I'm being downvoted here? What rule of HN did I violate?

~~~
maxgaudin
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
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.

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jere
>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/>

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startupfounder
"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>

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Dn_Ab
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
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.

~~~
Androsynth
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.

~~~
mynameishere
That's the spirit! To hell with us!

Did it ever occur to you that:

1\. No Chinese would ever think such self-hating thoughts.

and

2\. Such thoughts did not originate from your own reasoning, but were learned
through various channels?

It's not like it matters, as Martian colonization is less likely than human
extermination via a robot takeover, but still...

~~~
dsrguru
1\. While I happen to be American, not all of "us" on HN are. In fact, I have
a friend from China who is part of the HN community.

2\. How is wishing that all of humanity makes progress rather than just your
own country self-hateful? Isn't that the ideal?

3\. I know a lot of Chinese people who went to the U.S. for undergrad and
really care about both countries, which is a counterexample to your #1.

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harscoat
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
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.

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

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

~~~
smegel
Wasn't he responsible for PayPal? I'm not even sure a trip to Mars would make
up for that.

~~~
designatedInit
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.

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hxf148
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.

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Cushman
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
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
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.

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wallflower
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

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sho_hn
> "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
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
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.

~~~
Shivetya
Maybe malaise of current generations can be best summarized as the lack of
willingness to take such risks. Do you think that people flying the first
planes didn't have similar thoughts? What about those first crossing the
Atlantic oceans?

As with an generation there are those who are not complacent, those who will
take the risks needed to move us forward. Now they just have the ability to
communicate the desire to a large number of people quickly.

Many test pilots probably have flown with far less assurance than he will have
should he go. Man breaking the sound barrier was an inevitability and I bet
there were more than enough ready to try, the same will be when it comes to
going to other planets. Mr Musk is just putting it out there now

------
bceagle
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.

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

~~~
mongol
The long lasting existence of humanity requires a team effort. It is laughable
to believe that an individual can do it.

~~~
arrogant
Our team needs leaders. Nobody said they had to work alone.

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hexagonal
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
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.

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Nevaeh
>"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.

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aswanson
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.

------
netcan
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

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MikeCapone
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.

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eric-hu
Single page article:

[http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-
oe-0801-mo...](http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-
oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3336380,full.column)

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pjscott
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-mo...](http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-
oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3336380,full.column)

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

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adelivet
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
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.

