alt Hacker NewsI don't understand this thinking at all.
I share all the disillusionment and cynicism about Musk, shared here by others.
But he has also done amazing things. When someone declares they are going to create a Martian colony, something literally "out of this world", and against all odds makes unbelievable progress for years, including re-usable rockets that return and land vertically, more efficient powerful engines, and fast operational turnarounds, while making orbital travel mundane, hanging a criticism of schedules on the weak hook of "yet" is myopic.
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People don’t look at the complexity of a human character. They take the easiest extreme and run with it. I was on another HN thread where practically everyone was calling Elon a psychopath.
If you think objectively Elon is not a psychopath.
There will never be a colony on Mars. Not in the way we think about "colonies".
For starters it's too cold, too dry, atmosphere is too thin, and there's no reasonably sustainable power source.
But all of that is irrelevant because there's no magnetic field. So radiation. So unlivable.
There's also no point in a colony there. If life ends on earth it ends on Mars. There are no materials there we want. It offers exactly nothing we can't do better here, for much less money.
Will we land on Mars? Sure. There's always the goal of being first. But live there? No. Unsupported by earth? Very much no.