Renewable Revolution

Elon Musk thinks there is.  We will get there in space travelling Teslas. 

RE

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-wants-to-preserve-humanity-in-space/

Elon Musk wants to preserve humanity in space

Musk tells the crowd at SXSW that when the next dark age descends, we need some humans stashed on the moon and Mars to keep going.

by  Erin Carson

March 11, 2018 12:20 PM PDT

Elon Musk wants to save humanity.

That is, in part, what his quest to establish bases on the moon and Mars is about.

"There's likely to be another dark age," he told the crowd Sunday at the South By Southwest festival. Particularly if there's another World War in our future, we need to make sure "there's enough of a seed of human civilization to bring human civilization back."

While Musk was quick to say he's not exactly making a prediction, he does feel we need to get going before World War III rolls around.

This was just some of the ground Musk covered with moderator Jonathan Nolan, co-creator of HBO's "Westworld." Musk, who is the founder of multiple companies, including SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring Company, is tackling some of the biggest challenges and technological advances of the modern age, like space travel and autonomous vehicles. He made a two-day stop at SXSW to talk about his work. He also appeared on Saturday at the end of a panel with the cast and show creators of the HBO series "Westworld."

But Musk's not just thinking about doom and gloom. He's also thinking about the night life on Mars.

"Mars will need everything from iron foundries to pizza joints to nightclubs. Mars should really have great bars," he said.

Getting to that point hasn't been easy -- he said early on that SpaceX almost didn't survive. He had to borrow money from friends to keep going.

"For SpaceX, the first three launches failed. If the fourth launch had failed, we would have been dead," he said.

The big focus right now, thought, is just building the spaceship -- code named the BFR. (Read into that what you will, he said.) Musk wants to see the rocket take short flights up and down in the first half of next year.

There's also the topic of artificial intelligence. Musk's been known to express concerns that AI could bring about the next World War and Sunday's Q&A was no different.

"AI scares the hell out of me," he said, telling Nolan that while he's not typically a fan of regulation, he feels AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons and it's not like we let just anyone build nukes.

It's important to make sure the dawn of AI is one that's symbiotic with humanity.

Whether an AI-induced third World War is what drives us off the planet, he didn't say.

But hey, the salvation of humanity might just come with Martian pizza joints.

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I get what Musk is trying to do. He has done the BIOSPHERE math on the way things DYSFUNCTION, thanks to the polluting energy and chemical industry loving oligarchs  who run the place, in human society on planet earth. He sees quite well the tragic trajectory we are on , despite the best efforts of people like him and all the others out there who understad how routinely the precautionary principle of science is being bent, spindled and mutilated on behalf of short term profit.


He understands, like few here, what Catastrophic Climate Change is, how long it will last (from 200 to 800 years, optimistically thinking) AFTER human civilization goes into the dark age of massive die off misery that is almost upon us. I believe he thinks that a colony on Mars, which he expects will grow and prosper, can create an off planet sanctuary to weather the climate storm coming here. In a nutshell, he just doesn't want us to have all our DNA in a one planet basket.

But you must remember, RE, that Musk is NOT a God fearing 🕊 socialist like me. Musk is an atheist and a Capitalist. That said, I am on the same page as he is in certainly NOT expecting God to intervene to save us from ourselves. I admire his push to get off the planet as a technical achievement, but I share your opinion that it is not presently doable in any sustainable way. When everything goes to hell in a handbasket here, the Mars colonists will get no help from Earth and will perish, PERIOD.

There are other areas I part company with Musk, though I continue to entusiastically support his EV manufacturing corporation as a much needed boost to sustainable, non-polluting transportation transition because it is the only viable type (i.e. based exclusively on renewable energy) of tranportation in a finite world.

Back to the Mars colony thing, Musk wants to preserve a certain segment of human society, and doesn't give a rat's patutie about the rest. He is not racist, but he is elitist. In that, I think YOU are on the same page as he is. Don't tell me you would not try to stock your own Dunbar (150 to 200 humans) tribe with the highest IQ people, because I KNOW you would. And that is just WRONG.

Musk was trained in the 'lifeboat in the ocean' type atheist "logic". YOU share the same "logic". That logic calmly explains (and this is taught in every school in the USA from the 6th or seventh grade on 👎) that it is LOGICAL to NOT let all the people in the ocean who want to get into the lifeboat (i.e. let them drown) because that is the "ONLY WAY" that those in the lifeboat can properly husband their resources and thereby increase their evolutionary advantage to survive.

Bullshit.

The extreme example of a lifeboat in an ocean is used to brutally apply greed based cruelty to all humans in the biosphere. Not only is that a fallacious rationale, it is typical CRAP that Darwin and the Germans and lots of people in the USA (1880s trough the 1930's) used to "justify" eugenics ☠️ atrocities. The whole "lifeboat" thing is an EXCUSE to JUSTIFY empathy deficit disordered EVIL behavior!

Yes, it's true that resources on our planet are finite and human population pressure can hurt human society. But, there have always been humane ways to manage human greed and provide decent management of all of the biosphere we depend on. It has been the few NOW in the "lifeboat" of privilege, not those "drowning in the "water" of a polluted world, that CAUSED THE CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM.

Musk does not see that. He does not see that those scientifically picked colonist high IQ "Einsteins" he wants to use to populate Mars (to make his "Brave New World") CARRY THE GREED DISEASE OF DESTRUCTION WITH THEM.

So I agree with you that Musk is wasting his time trying to extend human civilization to Mars or any other extra-terrestrial location.

Musk may privately wish, like those "logical" folks in the lifeboat, that he could "save them all", but he has decided to let them drown because they are part of a failed civilization he wishes to be divorced from...

We cannot go to the stars until we learn how to avoid FOULING OUR NEST (i.e. SHITTING WHERE WE EAT), PERIOD.