Some little boys grew up idolizing Capt. Kirk and Spock. All well and good. But some of them have since aged into their 50s and love science and technology and hold positions of serious influence and have retained about the same degree of social sophistication, compassion and insight as they had in 6th grade. That’s a problem.

Genius, Idiot Savant, or Worse?

The days when humanity could produce a Leonardo da Vinci seem over. I’m referring to extraordinary levels of creative imagination and production within the arts, sciences, and humanities, all wrapped up holistically in one incarnated personality. Perhaps the web has made things more intellectually shabby, overall, tending to have replaced insight with information. I am not going to detail here the sordid underbelly of Elon’s manipulative, opportunist cleverness around his various past money generating undertakings — though I certainly could. Sub-genius level maneuvering accounts have arisen of late for most of Elon’s more sciencey-tech entrepreneurial accomplishments, including SpaceX, Tesla, and the precursor to PayPal which got him started. His Boring Company seems to have gotten off quite unscathed, although it has dithered nowhere after some cool photo-op maiden launches of high speed magnet driven tunnel capsules. We could let this one slide anyway since the master has remarked that his real motivation was less about revolutionizing southern California megalopolis commuting and more about proof of concept engineering for underground constructs on Mars.

It’s when we depart the STEM world and enter the more purely human regions, like social dynamics, interpersonal relations, and political activities that the shortcomings and deformities within Elon Musk’s makeup shine through. An early clue was his vanity project acquisition and devolution of the social media Twitter entity into naked X. Because he didn’t like, supposedly on principle, the trespasses against free speech the previous management permitted. So, he got it for $44 Billion, immediately applied his blitzkrieg efficiency makeovers, sliced off huge swaths of staff with no warning, oversaw a rapidfire 80% decrease in the net value of the company (down to about $9B) and removed numerous accounts of people who tweeted observations he disagreed with. Boy, would I want this guy in a position of power and influence if I were part of a first time Earth colony on planet Mars! Think big, be decisively disasterous, and act petty. Brave new civilization.

But wait there is more, much more. Turns out Elon likes the limelight of being a social influencer especially when it requires zero social responsibility. And he’s good at schmoozing up to politically connected wannabe oligarchs who might let him promulgate his dime store Ayn Rand philosophy onto American democracy, with the side benefit of letting him control, behind the curtain of public scrutiny, how quickly and widely and without government oversight various huge money contracts will flow into his companies. Elon 2.0: the Dark MAGA policy wonk buddy. Coming to an election near you: one million dollar incentive prizes to vote Republican in swing state swing districts. Free access for Elon-curated coding drone boys with uber-racist backgrounds to U.S. Treasury and IRS data. Even Elon White House press chats about his latest cool brainstorms. Prompting sane people from all quarters to ask: WTF is up with Boy Musk?! How can a supposed genius be so incandescently socially stupid?

How To Save Humanity, Episode 420

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to try and get Elon off-planet pronto, after all. But let’s at least have a look at what he says is motivating this life dream. Turns out the world’s currently wealthiest individual is a selfless humanitarian when all is said and done. The prime directive is to save our species. According to mid-20th century sci-fi enthusiasts everywhere, we only have an ephemeral window of stable intelligent technologically advanced civilization during which we are morally obligated to expand beyond our planetary borders. Otherwise we succumb via the heartless logic of Darwinism to somehow, someway, no longer being the fittest species atop the earthly pyramid. Collapse, without radical out-of-box action, is inevitable. What’s worse, Earth itself has a time limit for life supporting suitability. How come? Well, there’s the seemingly unavoidable eco-disaster scenarios in which our own techno-consumer hubris converts the physical paradise North America was for the natives into a vast parking lot/debris field without drinkable water or enough plants to make oxygen. Slowly but surely. Or there’s always the possibility of covid-20 on the horizon. I suppose we can ignore climate change as a worry since it’s obviously leftist fake science. But what about global nuclear destruction? Because you know, with modern distractions and all it is not inconceivable that some humans in power somewhere are exerting less than tactful diplomacy practices. Saving the best for last, the most sciencey reason Earth could be ephemeral is the possiblity of another extinction level meteor impact event, like the Chicxulub crater which nuked the dinosaurs and underlies the Gulf of — oh fuckit, that enormous body of water below New Orleans.

At this juncture, incidentally, would it be too haters-gonna-hate of someone to inquire as to the relative probabilities of a Martian versus Terran asteroid catastrophe? I asked Madamoiselle Google-AI and she has you covered. Due to several factors, which all 6th grade Star Trek nerds know in their sleep, the chances are much much higher that Muskville on Mars will be destroyed than any city on Earth. The offending factors are: (1) proximity of Mars to the asteroid belt and (2) severely thinner atmosphere on Mars for deflecting or burning up meteors before surface impact. In fact, one NASA expert opined that likely 200 at least basketball-sized meteors smash Mars every year. Maybe DOGE could axe this cretin. Keep this in mind while evaluating the discernment and thoughtfulness of Elon’s magnum opus, below.

In a nutshell, Elon wants to spend 20 years to deploy one million humans and “several” million tons of cargo onto Mars, using his SpaceX rockets. He estimates about ten launches from Earth per day. Which means, calculating very roughly, on average sixteen people (perhaps each equipped with an Elon-X NeuralLink helmet) and 200 tons of stuff per launch. Will Mars need air traffic controllers? Not clear, because the method that Musk wants to use to populate this effort is volunteerism. Yes, a million volunteers to relocate, irrevocably, to Mars. Elon wants to get the price down so practically any ordinary citizen with the hankering could go. He’s confident it will work once governments start sponsoring people. I already wrote the first draft of my go-fund-me. You should watch at least the Elon portion of the video below wherein he sums up his utopian vision. It is brief and begins at about 1:07 in. His performance is casual-sleek amazing, like next level Steve Jobs debuting his new iPhone. His SpaceX armada is arrayed behind him while Elon riffs to an adoring crowd in the Texas desert.

My absolutely favorite sentence from Elon’s entire life repertoire is the final one from this quote…

MUSK: “How many people do you need for a self-sustaining city? About one million. And several million tons of cargo. Yeah. Which we can do. And we can do this in about twenty years. At that point the future of human consciousness is assured!”

This one little flake of Elon Musk’s worldview creed forms the crux of his entire Mars and life delusion, in my view. Just get a million people and equipment to Mars using my plan and my rockets and eternity for the human species is secured. Problem solved. The earthly human shitshow could not possibly have anything to do with spiritual issues or humanity’s inability to avoid senseless conflict and warfare or our excess (and apparently increasing) individual egoism which overwhelms any efforts at cooperating or following socially-agreed legal guidelines. Just get a million volunteers up to the red planet and the human genome will clearly conquer the galaxy despite the crazy-dire everyday survival obstacles. Also, could someone explain how it would come about that this colony city would be 100% independent of Earth? Because if not, then all of the original pitfalls plaguing civilization on the home planet still persist and are in play for Earth II. (Which they would be in any case, since the true root of Earth’s issues are — humans.)

NOTE: I’ve included the following video link for anyone interested to get a less utopian handle on the technical and physical challenges involved in creating a sustainable human domicile on Mars. It’s opinions and arguments do not really affect the gist of mine, but they do reveal some essential context.

_______RS

Image : Still shot from witty, satirical music video about 1950s-style myopic conceptions of imminent Martian space colonies by ‘AI by Lily‘. (Worth a peek!)

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