Hasn't Elon Musk already dug that tunnel?

Golly sir, I sure am glad you’re here to explain it to me, but just for shits and giggles, let me take a stab at it.

Elon Musk wants to make humanity a multi-planet species, otherwise we are at risk of some kind of planet wide extinction level event. Having looked at the problem, he thinks the fundamental issue is one of economics. If he can get the price per person for a trip to Mars down to $500k, he figures he’ll get enough mad, bad and rich AF people to give forming a colony a go.

But that first step from earth to orbit is motherfucking expensive and aside from crazy unproven tech like a space elevator, thanks to the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation there really isn’t a cheap way to do this in terms of energy expenditure.

Ok, thinks Elon, what’s the other major cost in this whole shooting things into space gig? Hmm, the big fucking rocket costs a lot... be nice if we could reuse that instead of building a new one each time.

So he works on building a reusable rocket, and after many hilarious videos of “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, fuck me if the damn thing doesn’t start to stick the landing!

So now we need to do the same, but with a bigger rocket and a heavier payload. Can’t really risk an actual payload (see previous video of RUD) so what to do?

Well, the sensible, cost effective thing would be just a big heavy weight. But that’s got fuck all viral marketing appeal, so if you’re gonna shoot something into space as part of a multi billion dollar rocket program, what’s a measly couple of hundred k compared to the millions in free advertising for both Tesla and SpaceX this will generate!

Well, look at that. Turns out I do understand this!

But if think sending an expensive sports car into space WASN’T a frivolous waste of money, I invite you to spend time with someone sleeping rough or a family who doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from.

As I said, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, but don’t pretend this was anything other than a billionaire doing something insanely cool and expensive because he thought it was cool.

Elon Musk - Falcon Heavy Launch Recap

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After the recent production numbers of the Model 3 and the reports of horrible working conditions at the Fremont plant, Tesla lost a lot of its shine for me.

Elon Musk seems to be convinced that being a Silicon Valley bigshot of his calibre is enough to run this operation, or that industrialism of the sort that, say, Toyota is engaged in is outdated. Those pitiful production numbers and the issues with the workforce indicate to me that management at Tesla (read: Musk) is not capable of industrial manufacture of cars at scale. Not at this time, at least.

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This video is taken from this amazing talk given by Elon Musk.
*related https://videosift.com/video/Elon-Musk-Making-Life-Multiplanetary

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Excellent. But, I have a reaction to your (Green's?) text in the description.

1. Nostalgia is a motivator. But I think it tends to be a *strong* motivator only of individuals, not of collective societies. If Trump has nostalgia for fossil fuels (personally I think his motivations lie elsewhere), the good news is that that nostalgia won't be very contagious to American citizens. At least not for long.

People like Elon Musk / Tesla are making it clear that electric and renewables are the sexy high-tech future. That appeal to our vanity will be much more effective as a "carrot" motivation, as compared to a "stick" with carbon taxes etc.


2. This essentially boils down to an industrial version of Isolationism. Trump represents a bigger push in that direction by far compared to being motivated by nostalgia. BUT, I think that trying to explain that resistance in him and others purely through that anti-globalization lens misses some things.

Just as nostalgia is a better motivator for individuals than societies, altruism (if you believe it can exist) functions the same way. And that's 90% of what the Paris Accords are: altruism.

On paper, it makes sense for us as individuals in the US to acknowledge that we got a disproportionate level of advancement out of fossil fuel usage through our history. As individuals, we can see the undeniable truth in that. But ask us to act -- collectively -- on that and watch as our collective altruistic tendencies are drastically reduced compared to the sum of our individual altruistic tendencies.

That's not really evil, that's just human nature. But it is precisely the reason that I feel that encouraging people like Elon Musk is by far the superior way to lead us into the future. Tesla makes cars that are better than competing ICE vehicles for many/most use-cases. And not "better" in the sense that our individual sense of altruism gets triggered to reward our brain's pleasure center because we've prevented some Pacific islander's house from getting wiped out in a sea level rise by buying one. No, better in real, measurable criteria: less expensive to operate, better performance / top speed / acceleration, features ... potentially even panty-dropping sexiness. That shit can motivate us as a collective society much more reliably than altruism.

And that's why I think it is more important to encourage the Elon Musks of the future than it is to get TOO overly concerned about the Donald Trumps of the present. Although admittedly, there's certainly ways to try to do both.

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Mel Brooks: "Spaceballs".

Elon Musk and his engineers at Tesla have ...a nerdtastic sense of humor.