The Curious Mind of Mr. Musk
Can one of the world's billionaire geniuses get back on track with what is really worth his time?
“I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.” - Elon Musk
Looking at the future our world leaders are planning for us, it's hard not to be sad. In one corner, we have Isolationist/Globalists (Australia, New Zealand) prattling about empathetic cosmopolitan liberalism while flying into hysteria about COVID, shutting down borders and crapping on their poor, native and immigrant populations.
In the other corner we have the Nationalist/Isolationists (Hungary & Poland) prattling about how culturally superior they are while flying into hysteria about COVID, shutting down borders and crapping on their poor, native and immigrant populations.
In America, our Left and Right mirrors this conflict with the spicy addition of race wars.
They all tell us to fear the future because the OTHER side wants to destroy everything WE hold dear. They use these divide and conquer tactics because they're desperately afraid of losing what they have. The future means innovation and change and our elites want no part of it.
Say what you like about Musk, innovation and change is his thing.
Space is hope
Despite recent distractions, Musk is still mostly focused on his vision for SpaceX: Starship rockets ferrying people to-and-from Mars, to establish a permanent human presence there.
He founded SpaceX and honed his focus on Mars by using first principles reasoning.
Most of us don't use first principles. We reason by analogy, navigating our world by comparing new information to what we already know. We choose the path more followed, accepting its rules and limitations. Sometimes we make small changes and improvements to what's already been done, but these are incremental.
First principles throws all that away. It boils a process down to the fundamental parts that you can prove to be true, puts the function front and center and asks 'What outcome are you are looking to achieve?'
When you pay attention to the function and not the traditional form, you start to think for yourself, then build a solution from there.
First principles thinking came in handy in 2002, when Musk went rocket shopping. He discovered that a single rocket could cost up to $65 million and decided to re-think the problem. Russian scientists, thinking in analog about how much money they could make from the sale, were not happy about this.
Still, Musk persisted. He said "What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, plus some titanium, copper, and carbon fiber…vIt turned out that the materials cost of a rocket was around two percent of the typical price.”
Instead of buying a finished rocket for tens of millions, Musk decided to create his own company, purchase the raw materials for cheap, and build the rockets himself. SpaceX was born.
The next step, the key to getting life to be multi-planetary was reusable rockets. He said:
"If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space."
Falcon rocket boosters' vertical landings, the equivalent of “launching a pencil over the Empire State Building, putting it in reverse, and having it come back down and land on a shoebox on the ground in a wind storm,” would make reusable rockets and cheaper space flight possible.
Today, a SpaceX rocket launch is about 97% cheaper than a 1960s-style Russian Soyuz ride because of Falcon's innovative and precise pencil-point landings.
Why the big push to go to Mars?
Evolution doesn't always mean improvement, it's just the way an animal adapts to and exploits an environment. Like the blind mole rat. Thousands of years ago, when faced with an excessively dry and hot environment, their rat ancestors sheltered underground, exchanging sociability and freedom for the safety of isolation and darkness.
The scientists who studied these rats saw their adaptation to isolation while still reproducing as a plus.
“In humans for example, prolonged social isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was reported to have led to increases in cardiovascular disease cases, and cognitive deteriorations like depression and anxiety, in the worldwide population... in some species, however, social isolation is not experienced as a stressor, as they have evolved for solely solitary living.”
Maybe they think we have a future as Morlocks.
As animals devolve, so can civilizations.
"People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves." Musk says " It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better and I actually, I think, by itself, degrade, actually. You look at ancient civilizations like ancient Egypt and they were able to make the pyramids and they forgot how to do that. And the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts, they forgot how to do it."
The Romans also had malls with pizza shops, indoor plumbing. After the fall, it took a thousand years to get those things back.
Getting serious about Space
Since Nixon cancelled the Apollo program in 1970, the idea of sending human beings anywhere beyond low earth orbit became a joke. When Newt Gingrich proposed a moon base in 2012, it became comedy gold. Mitt Romney responded by saying “Ground Control to Major Newt: Nevada needs jobs, not a moon colony,”
Romney didn't see any benefit to Earth from an off-planet human settlement, but it's not an either/or kind of thing. Space exploration and the tech it enabled gave us GPS, better weather data, better defense capabilities. Some new tech, like carbon nanotubes and silicon wafers can only be manufactured in zero gravity. SpaceX’s Starship rocket could make that a profitable venture. The hope that we'll be spending long periods of time in space encouraged NASA to fund research on next-generation aeroponic growing techniques, something we can use on Earth as well.
But the most pressing need for space exploration is curiosity -- and adventure.
We need a frontier
"We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” -- Carl Sagan
Senior research fellow Eli Dourado says,
"Human institutions develop rigidity and rot over time, and they must be renewed by striking out into new terrain and rebuilding ... Our greatest advancements have come when the stakes are high ... The ability to commit at will to an innovate-or-die outcome is something we have lost in Earthly life."
Most people would rather avoid peril, and that's great, they can stay home. There are (a few) people who are looking for a challenge. The failed Mars One project is proof. In the spring of 2013, Mars One began accepting applications for a one-way trip to the red planet. Scheduled tentatively for 2023, the plan was to send four astronauts there to spend the rest of their lives as pioneers. Science journalists asked “Who on Earth would sign up to die on Mars?”
More than 200,000 people applied for the job.
Now, thanks to Musk's efforts and the challenges posed by the Chinese Space program, NASA is also rising to the challenge -- the Moon base dream may soon become a reality.
It's hard to imagine that anyone would want to live full-time on the Moon when earth is so close by, but it is possible that the Moon could be a colder, wilder version of New Mexico, hosting mining colonies and adventure tourism.
In the long term, this would help us get comfortable with the idea of being a multi-planetary species, of taking to the sky, creating settlements on Mars and beyond. In the short term, we'll have hope.
But what's up with Twitter?
"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims." - R. Buckminster Fuller
First principles thinking is great for solving engineering problems, but it's not as effective in solving complex social and cultural problems. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix them. For better or worse, the future is ours to make.
Musk’s effort to tackle the wicked problem of Twitter isn't one of his best. He's managed to tick off every partisan from Matt Gaetz to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
He stumbled into the divide-and-conquer race narrative that Scott Adams wholeheartedly embraced.
When Musk tweeted “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci" it was a direct threat to the American government that funded Fauci, Collins, Shi Zhengli and Daszak's Gain of Function experiments. It was no surprise that the media/government juggernaut then decided we have always been at war with Elon Musk.
Sometimes the solution to problems of Twitter can be found there. Daniel Hadas, Humanist and Lecturer tweeted.
"I lack a plan for cultural and spiritual renewal beyond "stop doing things that are evil and stupid". It has its limits, but it's worth a shot."
Just for a moment, imagine what the world would be like if we acknowledged the media/government's efforts to get us to hate each other is manipulative propaganda? What if we decided to take responsibility for our future and just -- stop hating?
Why not give hope a chance?
The more I am exposed to Musk the less I like him as a person. With that being said I really hope that Space X and Tesla succeed and do well. At this point I honestly don't know if he is even helpful in these companies actual missions.
Here is what Musk was good at. Inspiring very smart people to work towards a goal that is mutually agreed upon. Musk was essentially free advertising for both his companies, a great cheerleader for those goals and purposes, but he got mired down in the muck of ego to the point where he is becoming potentially detrimental. I thought this before he bought Twitter.
I don't think fame and being constantly in the public eye is good for people.