Musk is wrong about Mars

[struggle4progress]

What does Musk want to do, what are the problems, and why is he facing criticism?

[Blue_Tires]

1. Melon Husk loves to over promise and under deliver

That's why he's found a kindred spirit in Donnie.

As far back as a 2019 CBS interview, Elmer was swearing that he was just "...two years from landing an unmanned spacecraft on Mars and four years from crewed missions..." He's still spewing the same bullshit today -- Just like Donnie releasing his much touted healthcare and infrastructure plans "in a couple of weeks..."

He also swore up and down that the MSRP for the Cybertruck would be under $40k, and it turned out to be $80k (I see now that sales have been so craptastic that he's selling the top trim level $100k model for $80k)...

[hatrack]

8. See also: autonomous vehicles, the Cyber Truck, high-speed tunnels . . ..

Same old hype and bullshit.

[Blue_Tires]

12. Oh right, I forgot about his abandoned maglev project outside of Las Vegas

[struggle4progress]

26. 'Unbreakable' windows shatter

[Blue_Tires]

30. There's no such thing as an unbreakable window anyways 😅

How was he even allowed to get away with that bullshit?

[Wiz Imp]

33. In 2014, he said people could expect Tesla self-driving cars with within months.

10 years later and still no self-driving cars.

[Wiz Imp]

34. One million Robotaxis would be on the road by the end of 2020, Musk promised in October 2019

5 years later and still no robotaxis, let alone a million.

[Wiz Imp]

35. Musk tweeted on July 20, 2017, that he had received "verbal govt. approval for the Boring Company to build an

underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. It was a total lie.

https://wonderfulengineering.com/elon-musk-claim-govt-approval-hyperloop-turns-lie/

Elon Musk Claim About Govt. Approval Of ‘Hyperloop’ Turns Out To Be Lie

Mr. Musk, who has a habit of making some wild claims, did not say who gave him the permission, neither did he comment on the nature of the “verbal agreement.”

But anyone who has worked with the US authorities knows the US government does not work on “verbal government approvals.”

Sure enough, Musk had to walk-back on his claim in about 90 minutes

It was never built. In April 2022 he claimed his tunneling effort The Boring Company would “attempt to build a working hyperloop.” The following day the company tweeted “Hyperloop testing at full-scale begins later this year.” That also never happened. Musk spent the last decade barely engaging with the hyperloop, essentially outsourcing his attempt to kill high-speed rail.

[misanthrope]

2. Elon Musk if full of shit and he knows it

Mars is too inhospitable for human settlement. Our current technology is vastly inadequate for the job, not just the transportation but the large-scale terraforming required.

And the reason for terraforming's necessity is the most difficult and practically insurmountable obstacle in the idea: Mars has almost no magnetosphere. The planet is bombarded by solar winds that strip it of the elements needed to sustain life. Plus, there are cosmic rays to deal with as well.

The problem is just too big and if we had the tech and power to solve it, then we could save Earth from anthropogenic climate change first. But we don't. The Mars colonization pipe dream is a ridiculous waste of resources under current circumstances.

[IbogaProject]

3. Only .39 of our gravity too

He just wants to run those horrible asteroid mines like from the Terminater Movie.

[Parallax El]

14. All of this. It would take so long to make even part of Mars SURVIVABLE...

...that a bubble colony wouldn't support enough of a population to be self-sustaining for CENTURIES. It would be 100% dependent on Earth for resources, including human lives spent in deadly conditions.

The most inhospitable place on Earth is almost infinitely more hospitable than anywhere on Mars. It is dead in a way that, as Earthlings, we can only imagine.

Even if we could muster the long-term resources and WILL to create a self-sustaining colony on Mars, it would take absurdly long to terraform it. We're talking thousands of years. Long enough for macro-evolution to occur in our species.

It's all ludicrous. Colonizing Mars might be achievable in 500 years, if we waste valuable Earth resources to do it.

Terraforming it? 15,000 to 35,000 but we'll go over-budget and bankrupt long before then.

[misanthrope]

17. I recall Musk's appearance on Colbert

Last edited Thu Dec 26, 2024, 06:27 PM - Edit history (1)

Apartheid Clyde told the host he thought Mars terraforming could be fast-tracked by detonating numerous atomic bombs on it. Not only did I fully realize how completely full of it he was but even Colbert sensed it. That was when he called Musk a Bond villain.

Colbert loves having Neil deGrasse Tyson on there and I wish he had been at that moment. It would have been a pleasure to watch him make mincemeat of Musk’s malarkey.

[rampartd]

4. who would go?

anyone there becomes totally dependent upon supplies from earth, pretty much like the 17th century colonists in jamestown who were eating each other when the ships were no show.

i'd go as a military/government expedition maybe, but as a private enterprise , dependent on earthly billionaires, no.

[Roy Rolling]

5. Start with his first prediction from 2011

In the year 2011 Elmo said he’d land a human being on Mars within 10 years.

Math Interlude

2011
+10
= 2021

It will soon be be 2025

Bonus Math

2025
-2021
= You’re 4 fucking years overdue already Sissy SpaceX

[2naSalit]

6. First of all...

We humans will not be able to leave the planet and survive in physical form. Our physical bodies require too many elements present on this planet that are not present elsewhere and to think that we could actually bring our bioshperic needs and comforts with us is really a stretch.

Otherwise, I liked her arguments against leon's approach and rationale and the snippet of Maher and de Grasse-Tyson, that was good.

[misanthrope]

20. Yet now Maher worships Musk

Just goes to show how disingenuous Maher is.

[2naSalit]

23. A very good...

Illustration I would say.

[mercuryblues]

7. He probably thinks it full of caramel

and chocolate nougat.

Wait until he finds out it's full of trumps dirty diapers and MAGAts.

[HAB911]

9. finally someone addresses the lack of a magnetic field

just ain't gonna happen

[misanthrope]

21. That is the foundational matter

Without the magnetosphere, nothing else is possible.

[HAB911]

25. I just watched a couple of hours

on Curiosity streaming on how we will terraform Mars. 100 years from start to finish. Total Musk BS documentary/propaganda

[misanthrope]

31. That would qualify for science fiction

But not legitimate science.

[HAB911]

32. A BS in BS!

[NJCher]

10. Dangerous delusion

Indeed.

This is just a scam for musk to funnel massive amounts of tax dollars into his pockets.

He thinks consciousness resides in the body of people of earth. Laughable!

[misanthrope]

22. Human consciousness doesn't reside in human beings?

Do tell.

[Linda ladeewolf]

11. This type of thinking

Is the way people think that don’t want to do the work of fixing the problems on earth. We have one lovely planet. There are too many of us, it’s colonial thinking to want to spread out and expand to other areas instead of fixing what’s wrong. It would be much simpler for us to reduce our population, by not reproducing so much. And try to clean up the earth. Not easy, but simpler, not as dramatic though, not as imaginative. We need to eliminate the need for money and start recycling everything because it’s the only answer to our problem, not because it saves money.

[Crunchy Frog]

13. I would like to see humanity in its present form

quarantined on Earth for as long as possible.

Let's stop wrecking our own world before we go out and start wrecking other worlds.

[EX500rider]

24. How can you "wreck" a dead planet like Mars?

What's to wreck?

[LisaL]

15. Why doesn't he go to Mars and populate it?

Win win for everyone, I say.

[Wounded Bear]

16. For what it would cost to colonize Mars...

we could fix our environmental problems here on Earth.

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

[retread]

18. I'm not 100% opposed to colonizing Mars in the near future if muskrat is on the lead rocket.

[Xolodno]

19. We might figure a way out to colonize Venus before Mars.

At least in the Terra Forming way. Mars, we will probably have to put everything underground, that is not cheap. We know there is water on Mars, but the volume, salinity, etc. are still educated, but good, educated guesses. We might have to go the Kuiper belt and figure out a way to direct some comets toward Mars if our estimations are too far off.

And of course, we need to figure out how to generate a magnetic field, our sun is just stripping what little of the atmosphere there is. I "MIGHT" see a landing of humans there at some point, but don't have much faith in that happening. We can't even figure out how to get back to the moon and its right damn there. China and Russia are more likely at this point. When NASA's budget comes up, our Congress looks for ways to cut it.

[spapeggy]

29. What would be the point of either of those ventures

And especially from a cost benefit analysis, when we have planet right here with breathable air and a livable habitat.

[OAITW r.2.0]

27. If you want insight into Musk, I recommend reading "The Man who sold the Moon" by Robert Heinlein.

Heinlein fully develops a storyline that revolves around the heroic actions of the protagonist, the richest and smartest man on Earth.

[spapeggy]

28. Trips to mars don't justify the cost

For a group of humans to travel to Mars and send back pictures of red rocks. Pointless.

[edhopper]

36. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids

In fact, it's cold as hell.