Dreams of the rich and richer
Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon. In contrast, however avaricious, the titans of past gilded eras still saw themselves as human members of civil society. Contemporary billionaires appear to understand civics and civilians as impediments to their progress, necessary victims of the externalities of their companies’ growth, sad artefacts of the civilisation they will leave behind in their inexorable colonisation of the next dimension. Unlike their forebears, they do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest underground lair in New Zealand, colony on the moon or Mars or virtual reality server in the cloud.
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To escape “near-term” problems such as poverty and pollution, Jeff Bezos imagines building millions of space colonies housing trillions of people on the moon, asteroids and in other parts of the solar system, where inhabitants will harvest the resources of space for themselves and those left back on Earth. Elon Musk is convinced he will build a city of a million people on Mars by 2050 at a cost of up to $10bn a person.
Ffs. Multiply all the engineering it took to get the Mars Rover up there and working by eleventy trillion and get ‘er done in under 3 decades? Come on.
Oh, I love science fiction.
But then, I am aware that science fiction is, you know, fiction. It’s in the name, after all. Which means, not real, or at least not necessarily so. These guys seem not so much aware.
Bezos and Musk think they can make The Expanse come true.
That’s nice.
See, the thing about Musk is that you have to work out whether even he thinks he’s serious. As Scott Alexander reported in his account: “A Tesla employee described his style as demanding a car go from LA to NYC on a single charge, which is impossible, but he puts in such a strong effort that the car makes it to New Mexico.”
So Musk dreams big. And the reality falls well short. But that reality is then still ahead of everyone else. So Musk’s company has produced (pretty much starting from scratch) the world’s best-selling electric cars. And they will almost certainly be the first to genuinely self-driving cars (that will be a really big game changer). And one of his other companies (again, starting from scratch) is the first to reusable rockets, that are technically way ahead of any competition, and which now dominate the commerical launch market. And it was the first to a global satelllite-based internet, ahead of several competitors. All of these started off as Elon’s dreams. As for his AI and neuralink projects, well we’ll see what they end up being first to.
So “Starship” will not build a city of a million people on Mars by 2050. Obviously not. (Again, even Musk knows it won’t.) But it’s a heavy rocket way ahead of what anyone is doing and it will totally revolutionise the world’s launch capacity and SpaceX will be a hugely valuable company.
Feel free to deride this approach to things if you wish.
We do need to do many of these things (Mars is never going to be practical) but we’re never doing any of them as long as the tech bros consider climate change, energy production, and resource depletion a problem that someone else should be dealing with. Implement and plan to deal with that stuff in the near term and you’ll still have the civilization and resources you need left to do the other stuff before it’s too late…
Yes, some of the titans of the past built things like libraries, some of which still benefit us today. They were ruthless, and greedy, and not often very nice, but at least what they left behind had value.
As for what we need to do…we definitely do not need to colonize the moon or Mars. We ruined our planet, isn’t that enough?
@Blood Knight in Sour Armor:
Musk, through “Tesla Energy” and “Tesla Solar”, is doing way more than most to transition to non-fossil-fuel energy.
Though people will, of course, point to his use of private jets to flit between his various interests.
“ Though people will, of course, point to his use of private jets to flit between his various interests.”
Thank you for pointing to it, Coel.
And also the first to solve the traffic crisis with his system of tunnel roads… oops! Or his ultra high speed train by way of a sealed tunnel plus atmospheric evacuation… oops! Or his promise that Full Self-Driving would definitely be ready by
201720182019202020212024 definitely! One million(!) driverless robotaxis by 2020… oops! A human on Mars by20262029… oops! (Yes I know that’s almost 6 years away, but with it not even in planning yet, 6 years is an impossibility) Neuralink will repair brain damage and restore use of limbs by 2017… oops!Blah blah blah. Musk makes grandiose claims, hires employees with expertise to make it happen, then his fans either trumpet Musk’s brilliance if the promise is delivered, or memory-hole the promise if it isn’t.
@Holms:
So, to sum up:
There are lots of things that he has not (yet) achieved that no-one else has (yet) achieved either.
And there are multiple rather-notable things that he has achieved before anyone else, in the process building up multiple successful companies.
The fact that his style is to set timescales that are always absurdly over-optimistic seems a minor complaint if the outcome is that he does still get there ahead of anyone else (even if behind the initial absurdly over-optimistic timescale).
Your ridiculing of the timescale for full-self-driving cars would be fair enough if the result were that he was then overtaken by GM, VW and Toyota, but not so much if he is still first. (And all indications are that he will be.)
I really don’t understand the scorn for Musk … it seems ludicrous to me.
Mars is uninhabitable, the moon is uninhabitable, any place that’s beyond our atmosphere is uninhabitable. Even the oceans are uninhabitable to humans. Sure, we can build habitable boxes to live in (temporarily) but a steady supply of resources is necessary to keep those boxes habitable. So instead of the wise stewardship of our natural environment as the only sensible, sustainable ideal, we have the deluded escapists, who will require the further destruction of our natural habitat to jettison people and resources off the planet, into extremely hostile environments (and are seen as “visionary” and “genius” which is an assessment I disagree with).
I don’t know at what level of monetary wealth (and/or celebrity) that common sense, reason, and perspective start to deteriorate, but it seems to be an inevitable phenomenon. Of course everyone thinks they would do the right sort of things above this theoretical threshold, but it rarely happens. More often than not, with great wealth and celebrity, comes great stupidity. It’s curious how many people envy that.
For my, part, I can’t understand how anyone can look at Musk’s behaviour and come to any conclusion other than ‘unserious manchild’. His fanboys will excuse any broken promise or chafing at safety requirements. I note that even after I pointed some out, you completely elide his big failures, handwaving them as mere successes – no, VICTORIES! – that have not arrived yet.
As for Tech-Bros working on CO2 free energy production.
See this which is partly due to Bill Gates.
https://natriumpower.com/