Photo by Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA
Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire recently. Is that a good thing for one person to have that much wealth and influence? How feasible are Musk's plans to build spaceships to go the moon, Mars, or other areas of the solar system?
There are some good reasons the US have not gone back to the moon since 1972. Anything can go wrong on a mission as we have seen with Apollo 13, which failed to get to the moon but managed to return to Earth with its astronauts still alive.
There's not much reason to go. There's no life there or no way to grow anything. There's no oil or mining prospects there. The whole moon would have to be covered with gold to reap the enormous expenditures of financing a mission there. Even the worst land on Earth is better than the best land on the moon or Mars. It would certainly be much cheaper to build data centers here.
Mars is even worse than the moon. The red planet is so much farther away and a spaceship with humans might take years to get there. Don't expect everything to work right the first time. Something will probably go wrong and everyone on the spaceship will die before it even gets there. This may happen nine or ten times before we discover that people like Musk have taken the US government for trillions of dollars. There are so many problems on Earth we should be dealing with instead. There is poverty, hunger, disease, and so other issues which deserve our attention more.
The US government shouldn't throw away trillions on spaced out, unrealistic projects which are going to end up as major money losers. Musk may be great at landing government contracts, but he may be just building a skyscraper of cards which will eventually collapse, destroy our future, and leave the US with bills which will never be repaid.
With so much attention on President Trump, there has been relatively little attention has been paid to Elon Musk, who welds quite a bit of influence in American politics.
Musk may not be as rich or as successful as he and others claim. His net worth may be artificially inflated to attract investors, huge loans, and billions in government subsidies.
Tesla is not really a success story yet. The auto company has had tens of thousands of customer complaints, returns, recalls, and thousands of cars they can't sell. Maybe if Tesla had some models which more people could afford, they might have stronger sales. But there are only a limited number of upper income drivers buying them.
Maybe if Trump really wants to save money for the government, then they could eliminate tax breaks, subsidies, and huge concessions to major money losing companies like Tesla and Space X.
Musk has many ideas which are hugely expensive and impractical. He said he wants to move a million people to Mars. Would a million people actually want to move to Mars? This is just one of his far out, science fiction plans. Of course, Musk doesn't want to risk his own money in pursuing these pie-in-the-sky lies. Why do that when he can get investors, huge bank loans, and the US government to pay for them?
It didn't take Musk long to drive Twitter into the ground once he got a hold of it. First, it was the botched name change to X, which confused everyone. Then, he wanted to place his own rules and restrictions on it, leading to millions of dollars in lawsuits and a major drop in its value.
Now, Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has gained access to sensitive Treasury data including payments of Social Security and Medicare. How much power are we willing to give him before it's too much?
Musk may have become the world's first trillionaire at the expense of others. No one gets that rich without cheating many people along the way. Or maybe his "empire" will collapse like a house of cards and everyone else will be left with the bills and all of his broken promises. Musk may be an "emperor" without any clothes. Do not be fooled by this so-called "wizard" behind the curtain. He's a con man. I smell a rat! A Musk-rat!