| HN Mirror

> He wants to make humans an interplanetary species.

Sure, that's one of the things he wants to do. But his actions don't demonstrate that this is the primary thing he wants to do.

You can't build a sustainable colony on Mars without establishing a sustainable supply line until it reaches self-sustainability. Given what we know about Mars at this point, we're easily centuries away from achieving self-sustainability on Mars even if we fully committed to this goal right away. This means it's not just a cool tech problem, it's a logistics problem and logistics are boring. There's a reason Musk has repeatedly said he merely wants to make it possible to colonize Mars, not that he wants to do it. He's also smart enough that he doesn't want to go there himself because he knows it would mean dying in a barren wasteland even in the best of cases. Musk doesn't want to do the digging, he wants to sell the shovels.

If we want to build up the supply lines to colonize Mars, we at the very least need not just cool space tech but also boring stuff like a permanent supply base on the moon. But the moon has become boring ever since the end of the Space Race and building a supply post on the moon is - again - a boring logistics problem first, not a cool space tech problem. And because it's boring, it's far easier to see the big problems with it (all of which not only hold true for Mars but also do so to a much greater scale): any supply lines you build to the moon require supply lines on Earth first.

If you want sustainable supply lines in space, you have to build sustainable supply lines on Earth. And to have sustainable supply lines on Earth for space, you need a sustainable source of surplus resources. And even if we ignore the social implications of generating such "surplus" when millions live in abject poverty, this can only work if we prevent climate change from spiraling further out of control because it's difficult to run a business when the economy has collapsed and even more difficult to get work done when all the workers keep dying (presumably dying consumers are a smaller issue if we only consider valuations not revenue).

Tesla initially produced four reasonably mass market EVs but the most Musk contributed to them personally concept-wise was the childish naming scheme to spell out "S3XY". This was followed by an electric semi that is largely forgotten after the initial hype and the Cybertruck which literally isn't considered road-safe in most countries and hardly qualifies as "mass market". Despite promising FSD for years, the best Tesla has demonstrated since were robotaxi concept cars that again don't seem to have been designed with mass market use in mind. As for FSD and robotics: again Tesla hasn't yet demonstrated any ability to come anywhere near Musk's promises. So contrary to the popular narrative Tesla is not "building an EV future" - not that it would be helping address climate change even if it were because that would require a focus on mass transport.

Which brings us to the next thing: the Boring company. Again Musk's narrative sold this as an important step in preparing for Mars because if water is underground on Mars we'll need a lot of tunnels but the company is best known for its many projects announced and subsequently cancelled or abandoned across the US - and the Las Vegas "Loop" which is a claustrophobic underground shuttle service with gamer lights and mostly exists because Elon Musk hyped the idea of a (high speed vacuum tunnel) "Hyperloop" to - and it's worth pointing out that he has literally admitted as much since - preempt plans to build a public highspeed rail system.

What else was part of the narrative? Oh, right: SolarCity. Again Musk bought a company and claimed it was part of a plan to colonize Mars because we don't have fossil fuels on Mars so certainly the future must be solar - and of course those Tesla Superchargers need to be charged somehow, too. The company was eventually folded into Tesla (as Tesla Energy) and has shifted from mass market solar panels to making most of its revenue from batteries and selling primarily to big customers.

SpaceX at least largely does what it says on the tin if you ignore that it mostly still exists because the US government all but abandoned direct investments in space travel and SpaceX managed to collect a number of lucrative government contracts by controlling a de-facto monopoly position. Starlink also mostly seems to exist to exert an uncomfortable amount of political power over the governments that have bought into it (as the Ukrainians had to find out the hard way).

Elon Musk has an almost obsessive hyperfixation on the letter X and the idea of colonizing Mars, yes - he's autistic. But that doesn't mean everything he does he does in service of that goal. It doesn't even mean he actively contributes towards that goal in a meaningful or well thought out manner. It doesn't explain why he decided to father an uncomfortable number of children with an even more uncomfortable selection of partners (especially when it comes to business partners and employees) or why he's extremely selective in which token child he decides to shower with praise and attention (if not his own then at least in public appearances). It doesn't explain why he actively sabotages more climate friendly public mass transit projects to favor unsustainable individualized transport deliberately designed in such a way it can not be accessible to most. It doesn't explain why he decided to make a great show of "leaving the left" and presenting himself as "anti-woke" just in time when a big hit piece on him was about to be published because of his inappropriate behavior toward women. Etc etc. None of that logically follows from the goal of making humans an interplanetary species except in the most trivial of ways (i.e. stranding a person on Mars would technically make humans an interplanetary species for as long as that person survives).

The hate (if you just want to lump all criticism or distate into that label) Elon Musk gets is not "because he wants to make humans an interplanetary species", he gets it for the things he does. And in many cases what he does is actively damaging to his stated goal.