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Comment by bdhe | Hacker News Reader

> There's always something to learn from everyone. Elon reiterated one thing frequently - "We have to get to Mars soon because I don't want to be dead before it happens"

I understand the idea of learning from everyone, even those whose values I strongly disagree with.

But after learning about everything Elon has done in the public sphere, would this statement be more likely just narcissism rather than a deep and inspiring virtue?

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That doesn’t really matter though? The end result is we’ll get to Mars faster than we’d otherwise do.

The way things are going here on Earth (thanks in part to Musk and "Glorious Leader" Trump), we ain't makin' it to Mars before global resource wars completely cripple all our scientific aspirations, including becoming a "space-faring" species. It's all wasted effort at this point, because nobody seems willing to do what it's gonna take to ensure that humanity has any future at all.

I think it matters a great deal! If that result comes at the expense of - let's say - progress fighting climate change because Elon also ended up defunding and destabilizing a lot of science with the same instincts that got him to proclaim his mission of going to Mars, it is not obvious that we only ought to focus on the end result, and even if we do, that only one set of end results need focus.

We may be closer to going to Mars, an extremely inhospitable place, at far greater expense than simply making the world we were evolved to survive in a little better.

I very much would like to see a human on Mars very very soon —- only because I really hope it will be Elon.

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