He may or may not be buying MSNBC, but Elon Musk isn’t taking any put-downs from Neil de Grasse Tyson on his Mars ambitions.
The entrepreneur responded today to deGrasse Tyson’s barbed comments on Friday’s Bill Maher “Overtime” regarding the feasibility of going to Mars.
The two have long warred over the Mars question. Musk views Mars colonization as necessary to humanity’s survival, while Tyson sees it as secondary to solving Earth’s immediate challenges. It’s an argument that has raged among scientists and culture observers as far back as the dawn of space exploration in the last century.
In this latest squabble over Mars, Maher asked deGrasse Tyson how long it would take for Musk to “realistically send humans to Mars.” Maher played to a longstanding position of deGrasse Tyson, who has insisted we focus on bettering earth.
“How badly would we have to rat f**k Earth before it’s worse than a place that’s 200 below zero with no air and no water with six months to reach it?!” Maher asked. Tyson yelled, “Preach it! Preach it”
“I have strong views on that,” deGrasse Tyson said. “My read of the history of space exploration is such that we do big, expensive things only when it’s geopolitically expedient, such as we feel threatened by an enemy. And so for him to just say, let’s go to Mars because it’s the next thing to do. What is that venture capitalist meeting look like? ‘So, Elon, what do you want to do?’ ‘I want to go to Mars?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘$1 trillion.’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘No. People will probably die.’ ‘What’s the return on the investment?’ ‘Nothing.’ That’s a five minute meeting. And it doesn’t happen.”
“At some point somebody has to pay for it and just being interested in something is not the same thing as paying for it.”
Musk responded Saturday on X, metaphorically slapping his forehead in disbelief.
“Wow, they really don’t get it. Mars is critical to the long-term survival of consciousness. Also, I’m not going to ask any venture capitalists for money. I realize that it makes no sense as an investment. That’s why I’m gathering resources.”
Musk then got in a darker mood, questioning deGrasse Tyson’s motives for his comments.
“The real problem is that Neil decided to grovel to the woke far left when he got hit with a #MeToo. You can avoid being canceled if you beg for forgiveness and push their nonsense ideology. The truth hurts.”
The billionaire went on to make his case for doing a Mars venture.
“Even if we fail at creating a Mars colony that can grow without continuous support from Earth, the absurdly ambitious nature of the goal nonetheless results in the creation of alien-level technology that is crushingly better than competitors who merely aim for Earth orbit.”
