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Elon Musk To Write a Book About Earth Sustainability and Mars Colonization
MarkWhittington writes Elon Musk has taken on quite a number of projects with a goal of changing the world while making lots of money doing so. He proposes to revolutionize space travel through his commercial launch company, SpaceX. His more earthly endeavors have included electric cars, home solar power, a transportation system called the Hyperloop, a space based Internet and, most recently, a battery that can power a house. Now, according to a story in Business Insider, Musk will open his mind on his views on "sustainability" was well as Mars colonization in book form.
Can't we wait for the actual book to be written, published, and reviewed by one of ours — instead of seeing more vaporware appear on the /. front-page?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I love reading books written by experts in their field about their field. What I never read are books written by people who think that success in one field gives them magic insight into fields not their own.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
A guy who got rich off of one of the more hated financial service companies must automatically be a futurist genius.
Paypal was just one of his many accomplishments. There is also Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. I think he is at least as qualified as anyone else to make predictions. Especially about the future.
The shallowness of the public just gets more shocking all the time.
So who should the public be listening to? Visionaries like Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren?
And yet, he continues to have a massive backlog, even though they are now producing at a rate of over 50,000 cars / year.
As to China, that was a horrible mistake for him. The only way that they will buy is if he moves manufacturing there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Expert" predictions are notoriously wrong
The purpose of his book is to change the future, not predict it. I is about what should be, rather than what will be.
>If Musk made the prediction that the future is going to be a low energy future with less material wealth than your parents, would you defend him as much?
Well, those are kind of the options, aren't they? Either we go to space, or we are forever limited by the resources available on Earth. The limits which all rational predictions say are going to starting to hit hard over the the next century. Granted, if we get off fossil fuels we can increase total energy consumption by at least an order of magnitude or two before waste heat starts causing comparable problems - but when it comes to raw resources, mining space is likely to be considerably easier than mining the Earth's mantle.
And then there's the pesky fact that space-based solar is the only long-term viable technology for achieving that kind of energy consumption without doing massive environmental damage - sucking that much energy from the winds or tides would almost certainly wreak havoc, and it would completely consume estimated total (not just discovered) fission and fusion ore reserves within only a few centuries. And you can't very well do ground-based solar on that scale, not unless you want to encase the entire planet in solar panels. And building space-based solar farms economically will require either fundamentally new surface-to-orbit technologies, or a viable space infrastructure. Sure, it's a very long-term plan, but our species has reached the point where we really need to start planning beyond our own lifetimes if we want to survive - just look at the problems our short-sightedness is already creating.
The real lunacy is to think that we can sustain a perpetual-growth based economy within a fishbowl. It worked for a couple centuries, but we're pushing up against the glass now, doing serious long-term environmental damage for the sake of a few more resources. Going to space will at least open the door to a few more centuries of "sustainable" growth before we reach the limits of the solar system, maybe as much as a several millenia depending on growth rate and whether we find that the Oort cloud is conductive to harvesting.
There's certainly an argument to be made that we need to get off the "sustainable growth" delusion that has infected our species, but personally I'd like to see the door opened to continuing it for a while without destroying our planet - just in case we can't cure ourselves overnight.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Let me see if I understand this right.
1) You are so scared of the guy that you do not show your login.
2) Here is a guy that has been critical to 5 companies being successful, but he is a PR firm.
3) how many entrepreneurs have 5 of 5 companies be successes?
4) how many entrepeneurs can you list that were critical in changing society in 3 companies, let alone 4?
So, why are you so afraid to face facts? Why are you so afraid to show who you are? My guess is that you are simply another troll that is paid to lie here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Free orbital spaces - rotating terraria - could be built out of asteroidal or lunar material
Too expensive. When faced with resource struggles due to overpopulation, people aren't going to build rockets. They'll just kill each other.
NO, he had the insight, and much more importantly, he took the risk and made things happen. It's the right time and the right place only in hindsight.
Keep bitching and moaning about others' success from the comfort of your couch, while the risk takers out there continue to do big and great things.
for what its worth, I think you are really stretching the limit of "success". Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX are not successful by traditional metrics. They don't make money. All success so far is self-perpetuating hype, which in fact may dramatically assist long term success, but has not yet. These companies are all valued on future promises based on quite uncertain growth projections, which may or may not pan out. I'm not really familiar with SpaceX because its private, but the only money made on Tesla and Solar City is by speculators who have managed to "sell" promises to other spectators. Investments in these companies haven't paid off by generating income. I think this would be the basic formula to decide success. Not fantastic growth that could torpedo at any moment and leave a 20b hole in speculator pockets.
Solar city's anticipated success is based on a business plan they are already transitioning away from, lofty valuations of future revenue will not materialize as they are forced to abandon their cash cow, principally due to well-financed competitors who are willing to pass on more of the economic benefits of solar energy to their customers. The amazing thing, is that despite approximately 6 months of this knowledge, most analysts have not substantially reduced targets based on solar city's own information. That should tell you something about the importance of "hype" or "future promises" in determining the "success" of a company.