[tuacker]

I feel like everything Elon Musk undertakes with his companies is just one huge Mars Beta Test.

  - SpaceX:
      Obvious, got to get to space somehow  
  - Tesla:
      Build cars/machines to run on something
      that is guaranteed to exist on Mars (the sun) vs. Oil  
  - Gigafactory:
      How to build batteries 101  
  - Solar roof:
      While Earths environment may not be as
      harsh as Mars you still learn something, and improve
      solar panel production in the process  
  - Boring:
      May not make too much sense on Earth with  
      existing infrastructure, but undereart..undermars?
      transportation is protected from the environment/sand
      stroms/whathaveyou.

I also don't know about the mineral composition of Mars and what boring does to the usability of those, but this may be a 2 birds one stone: Bore underground network and get required materials to build out mars base.

How to go to Mars and stay there:

  1. Figure out what you need
  2. Build it
  3. ???
  4. Mars

Where 3. is use it, refine it, perfect it, like landing a rocket on a automated barge in the middle of the sea.

Or he just hates LA traffic.

[tinym]

By the time we've learned how to live on a planet as inhospitable as Mars, maybe we'll know how to make a home on Earth.

[Strom]

I thought we already knew how to make a home on Earth. What is this in reference to?

That our current methods are unsustainable? There are plenty of ideas for solutions.

That the current state of human cooperation is below the necessary threshold to achieve a self-sustaining society on Mars? Maybe, but I'm optimistic that we'll find the inspirational leaders that are required.

[tinym]

I had a bramble of related ideas in mind, and instead of putting in effort to untangle them I lazily let them came out as a pithy aphorism. But:

- Even if all of Musk's enterprises were aimed at colonizing Mars (like gp suggested), they can be quite useful here.

- Turning Mars into a self-sufficient habitat is both an absurdly long-term (and laudable) goal and no guarantee of survival. We have to worry about the problems of surviving on Earth today and, in the very long run, how to live in many other places.

(upvoted your comment, because I agree with it)

[gpm]

> I thought we already knew how to make a home on Earth.

It seems to me that this really isn't the case. Our attempt to make a home here is causing a mass extinction, extremely fast change in atmospheric makeup (compared to historical models), depletion of fresh water reserves (in some areas anyways), increased frequency of bad weather, earthquakes, etc. Under a 'business as usual' model I have trouble seeing our current ecosystem supporting us for long (e.g. another 100 years).

[erikpukinskis]

There are a billion or so people living sustainably, and probably 1% of those are doing it at a Western standard of living. We just haven't figured out how to democratize access to the culture of how to do that broadly in all climates.

[arcticfox]

I think the key difference in Elon's approach is that he snatches the most viable pie out of the sky and figures out how to make it happen today.

In my opinion that's part of "knowing how" - knowing how to make something actually happen outside of theories. Hopefully we'll get there soon.

[scionaura]

Why the hell would you be optimistic about that.

[tinym]

Would pessimism help?

[mabbo]

By the time we've learned how to live on a planet as inhospitable as Mars, maybe we'll have figured out how to deal with LA traffic.

[sjg007]

Self driving cars should fix things. At least a hive mind autonomously driving traffic should, in theory, reduce misery.

[i386]

That kind of attitude gets you nowhere very quickly. Why do _anything_ better?

[unityByFreedom]

What makes you feel moving to Mars will solve issues inherent in humanity?

[bhhaskin]

We know how to live on another planet like Mars. The issue is getting there, and getting there at scale.

[aylmao]

Living there at scale is an issue too; the experiments ran here for a year in the desert require lots of training, careful planning and in general lots of time and resources. If we want to go to mars and stay there indefinitely we'll need bigger communities, which means manufacturing in mars, making the transition more seamless for a wider range of people, and in general just making more from less.

PS: Don't think this comment is down vote worthy, just healthy discussion imo.

[dyarosla]

I didn't downvote you, but I am genuinely curious where you got the idea that we know how to live on Mars already?

[phlakaton]

In theory, you just go there, plop down a habitat, and live in it.

In practice, it might be a little tougher than it sounds. :-)

[shrimp_emoji]

At least the low gravity makes a space elevator tenable with current materials -- that'd be a big aid. Getting to and from parking orbit from Earth is such a pain!

[cm127]

Solar radiation? Probably why burrowing would be the way to go.

[RivieraKid]

This crazy theory has to die, it just doesn't make any sense. I've seen this several times on reddit and hn usually with a bunch of upvotes and perhaps the most perplexing thing is how so many presumably smart people don't see how obviously little sense it makes.

Musks starts a healthcare company? Mars-related of course, he wants to solve the cosmic radiation problem on route to Mars. Buys Netflix? Heh, that's pretty obvious, people on Mars will need some entertainment!

[kbenson]

Because in some respects it's not a theory, it's his own explanation for why he does certain things. The extrapolation to how it applies to new ventures is theory, but it doesn't obviously make little sense. It doesn't even need to be realistic, all that has to be true for the theory to be true is that Musk believes it, as it's an explanation of his behavior.

[pavelrub]

Musk has never used Mars as an explanation for any of his non-SpaceX ventures. His own explanations for why he got involved with Tesla, started The Boring Company, or invented the Hyperloop have nothing to do with Mars or space.

[spullara]

It isn't a theory at all. It is what drives him.

http://mashable.com/2013/03/10/elon-musk-sxsw-2013-mars/

[mahyarm]

It's a joke :p

[bmmayer1]

> Or he just hates LA traffic.

Nope that's the main one. You obviously haven't lived in LA :)

[namlem]

I assume this is part of his motivation. The cost of LA's perpetual traffic clusterfuck must be immense. The car tunnels in the video were silly, but being able to build subway tunnels faster and for cheap would be a huge boon for everyone. I'm sure he's fully cognizant of the utility of tunnel boring technology on Mars though. There's no way he hasn't thought about it.

[jnicholasp]

By the time a significant tunnel boring project gets planned, approved and built, cars will be self driving and the Uber model of rides on demand will be extremely prevalent. Traffic will be massively reduced and existing roads will be much more efficiently used.

I agree with the theory that Musk is aiming these boring machines at Mars. That makes more sense than using them to attack the traffic problem when that problem is already being solved by one of his other companies.

[namlem]

I doubt very much that even self driving cars will solve LA's traffic problem by themselves. The sheer volume of people is so large, that mass transit will probably still be needed.

[jnicholasp]

You may be partly right.

But self-driving cars will enable a sort of ad-hoc, on demand carpooling style 'mass' transit: something like ten-passenger vans that deliver commuters from similar downtown areas to similar home neighborhoods. If only ten percent of commuters switched to that method, taking ten cars off the road and replacing it with one van, the volume of traffic drops immediately to 91% of what it was. That alone, plus significantly smarter, denser, more efficient, networked AI driving, will hugely reduce gridlock.

And at some point as more jobs get automated, and the jobs that remain human-accessible become more knowledge-based and less presence- and specific time-based, we'll move away from the huge spikes in traffic at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., spreading traffic volumes more evenly out across the day.

[sq_]

This is the only possible answer. LA traffic sucks.

[placeybordeaux]

We'll have to look seriously at living underground on mars. It won't protect us from solar rays on the surface. One of the cheaper ways to protect yourself is to put a layer of rock inbetween you and the sun.

[BurningFrog]

Is the main radiation danger the Sun or the background "cosmic" radiation?

I've been assuming the latter, but I realize now that I don't actually know.

[marze]

Both are significant dangers, but radiation from the sun can be shielded fairly easily. Not so high energy cosmic rays.

[BurningFrog]

You can for example put an entire planet between you and the sun radiation by going out at night.

[eru]

Doesn't matter too much for the rocks: if a few metre of rock won't absorb the radiation, neither will your body.

[schoen]

That doesn't make too much sense to me, since your body could be harmed by absorbing only a fraction of the energy of a large radiation dose.

[eru]

Valid point. Though I think given the spectra involved, it probably doesn't apply.

[eru]

Underground living on Mercury is much more interesting than Mars. (There's a band close to the poles and a few meters down that has very stable and comfortable temperatures.

[kolinko]

Perhaps if you're building a cellar. If you want to make a 10-story building - even in a virgin terrain, it's a complicated operation.

Not to mention that you need to make the materials such that they resist a huge side pressure, water leaks and so on.

Psychological costs are also costs.

[Retric]

Water leaks are not going to be a problem on mars. Significantly lower gravity 3.711 m/s vs 9.8m/s also drastically lowers pressure from burrowing.

[clock_tower]

Wide-open spaces, even enclosed ones, can reduce the psychological burden of confinement quite a bit -- there's a variety of Russian strategic-missile submarine with a swimming pool, for example. This subject also comes up frequently in SF (science fiction, not San Francisco, which has the opposite problem); there was some discussion of it on the "Atomic Rocket" worldbuilding guide, IIRC.

[lambdadmitry]

I… I think the picture of that "pool" in your head is slightly wrong [1].

Tangential: the source [2] is pretty interesting.

[1]: http://pics.livejournal.com/igor113/pic/001e551p

[2]: http://igor113.livejournal.com/27205.html

[ChefDenominator]

Why build layers at all? Urban concentrations too high?

[csomar]

Is it possible to make a huge nuclear explosion/reaction that produces the same atmosphere we have on earth?

[placeybordeaux]

There are ways to teraform the planet, but they are well beyond our capabilities.

[ceejayoz]

No?

[csomar]

Wrong grammar. I was actually asking a question.

[flamedoge]

how to become ant people

[infiniteparamtr]

Human evolution would surely change direction after a few millenia of living underground in lower gravity

[inopinatus]

I'm pretty sure Elon Musk is preserving our species by laying the foundations for us to leave and survive beyond this planet. He's the ultimate prepper.

I'm totally down with that, by the way: I believe there's a nonzero risk that our resource consumption trajectory, population growth and environmental carelessness will combine within centuries (if not sooner) to make this planet incapable of supporting us.

If plan A is "fix human behaviour", then we need a plan B. Plan B must be get another planet.

"All of this was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars." - Sinclair.

[estebank]

> While Earths environment may not be as harsh as Mars you still learn something

Apparently the problem of martian storms is not that rocks are flying around[1] but just plain ol' dust[2] reducing the efficiency to very low levels, both by deposit and by floating in the air.

[1]: http://www.space.com/30663-the-martian-dust-storms-a-breeze....

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaning_event

[stanmancan]

I've always enjoyed this theory. Just one guy figuring out how to take over a planet; no big deal.

[gjkood]

Obligatory Pinky and the Brain reference.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/every-single-pinky-and-the-brain-pla...

[SubiculumCode]

The thing to do is to check for what is potentially inconsistent with your hypothesis. For example, what about the neural link company?

[ChuckMcM]

That is totally how you are going to fly his rockets :-) So much easier if you just put on a helmet and now you can use your thoughts to control the switches and inputs.

[bdamm]

As a pilot I find this idea disconcerting because my thoughts are so imprecise compared to my actions. However, I suppose it would be like learning to ride a bike; you'd get used to what it feels like for your brain to guide the rocket much like a bicycle rider shifts their weight. But really, couldn't a computer do this better?

[ChuckMcM]

See this article: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/420756/wheelchair-makes-t...

Consider a man/machine interface where the man controls the intent and the machine controls the precision.

[SubiculumCode]

I'd hate to see what letting my mind drift does to a flying ship.

[frisco]

Why bring a bottle of earth with us everywhere we go? Why not adapt ourselves to the environments rather than the environments to us?

[stcredzero]

      Build cars/machines to run on something
      that is guaranteed to exist on Mars (the sun) vs. Oil  

You can run internal combustion engines on Mars, provided you supply your own oxygen. This is discussed at length in The Case for Mars. It's likely that the first indigenous Mars-built Utility Vehicles will be fueled with Methane/O2 or Methanol/O2. It will be far easier to establish the tooling for internal combustion on Mars than it would be to establish Li-ion battery production.

[sjg007]

Musk could probably afford to take a helicopter from his home to work everyday if he wanted. It'd be a little ridiculous but feasible. At any rate he could probably rent landing time at one of the skyscrapers on Wilshire if his home doesn't have a helicopter pad. I think he flies from Torrance to San Carlos a lot already.

Still fascinating to see all of this stuff take shape. It's definitely like living in the future. You would think there wouldn't be money in it... but there is!

[pabloacastillo]

This project and the Hiperloop to me seems really alike, testing the capabilities of non-rocket launchers.

Kinda like in Verne's "From Earth to the Moon", both try to move and accelerate objects, maybe enough to launch something into orbit?

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Non-rocket_spacelaunch

Or maybe im reading to much scifi :)

PS: sorry for the broken english, not my native language.

[snake117]

That's a really interesting perspective. I've never made those connections with Elon's work.

You can throw OpenAI in the mix also. If there are strong advancements in AI then it could possibly be used to automate the facilities if there are not enough workers or as a possible fallback option, among other scenarios.

[jnicholasp]

There will be lots of positive uses for AI, both on Mars and on Earth, but Musk's main stated motivation for both Open AI and Neuralink is that he's deeply worried about AI being an existential risk to humanity, and he's trying to take steps to mitigate that risk.

[spullara]

He has stated unambiguously that he wants to die on Mars and not on impact. All of his investments lead to Mars.

[ziikutv]

This was exactly my thought as I watched the video.

[jlebrech]

Hyperloop is a mass driver too

[ziikutv]

This is exactly my thoughts