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Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

In the trailer, there's this line: "When Musk says that the future of humanity is to colonize Mars, he is selling us dreams. That's not happening."

That irritates me a lot. Everything extremely difficult (or thought to be impossible) is a dream until someone (or some company) works hard on it and invests in it for a long time. Those that would criticize Musk & SpaceX for chipping away at this seem to be effectively saying "do not try."

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Funny, for me it's the opposite: I get extremely irritated when Musk or someone else says the future of humanity is to colonize Mars. If you think you can turn a bare rock into a livable planet, please do something about Earth and global warming first.

Planets are spaceships. Mars is a dead planet either because its shields[0][1] were disabled, or it never had shields to begin with.

So the first thing we'd want to do is activate a magnetosphere on Mars. I rarely see anyone talking about that[2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/real-mart...

[2] https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/how-to-give-mars-an-atmos...

It comes up every so often. If you're actually putting in enough effort to make a proper colony, and not e.g. McMurdo Station but colder and redder and the air's unbreathable even in summer and the soil's poison, then an artificial magnetosphere is not a huge additional cost.

It's way beyond what we can do right now, but then again, at time of writing Starship has yet to have been in a circular orbit, so all aspects of a Mars colony are way beyond what we can do right now.

The more important point is that we should stop sabotaging the ship we're in.

> please do something about Earth and global warming first.

Through Tesla and his prominent advocacy for green energies, you don’t think his doing that?

You mean for example the gas turbines he's running without permit to power his data centers?

You’re missing the forest for the trees.

He's promoting the political party that denies the science showing that climate change is happening, so no.

> party

That should be plural.

He also supports AfD in Germany, a party which like the R:s in USA clamours for oil and coal power while denying that climate change exists.

Musk has also vocally and monetarily supported Reform UK who also denies climate change and tries to expand fossil fuel production.

Same thing with Musk’s support for Javier Milei who calls climate change a “leftist lie”.

A man is known by the company he keeps.

Multiple of those parties, e.g. in Germany he's supporting the AfD

The biggest threat to billionaires is a functional government. They might have to I start paying taxes.

Terraforming a planet is equal to EVs? Reversing, not just slowing, anthropogenic climate change needs a bit more than a green transition. And if you think Mars as is constitutes humanities future, spend a year at the South Pole. Without terraforming, it’ll be that, but far worse. If we can make that rock half way survivable, not even properly habitable, we’ll see those techniques applied closer to home long before.

$50K for a Tesla is kind of the opposite of advocacy.

He made an electric car the into the best selling car in the world, and is building the largest solar cell factory in the US. What more should he personally be doing about global warming?

> He made an electric car

The actual founders of Tesla did; Elon did not.

In case people didn't know already, he was not a founder, he bought the company and demanded the title as part of the purchase.

No, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning did not make the Model Y. They left the company more than a decade before. Neither did they make the Model 3, nor the Model S before that. They didn't even make it to the first delivery of Tesla's first car, the Roadster. Your implication that they deserve credit for two decades' worth of Tesla's achievements after they left is plainly ridiculous.

Also, Musk was the chief product architect of Tesla’s first car, the Roadster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(first_generati...

The founders didn't even have a prototype, they had nothing.

https://leasehackr-assets.b-cdn.net/original/3X/a/9/a9a9015c...

Not even capital. Elon brought that too.

LOL this comes up every single time. Tesla was nothing, it was a name and a plan. They had absolutely 0 and statistically would have never done anything.

Ya'll need to stop with what the founders accomplished pre-Musk.

I have never owned, nor have any desire to ever own a Tesla or any electric car yet, but this sideline war is amusing to see.

What else should the richest man on the planet be doing about global warming? Really? Dude literally had full access to the US government and…? Like… he could tweet on it to start?

"best selling car in the world"

The best-selling car in the world all-time is the Toyota Corolla. The Tesla Model Y was the best-selling car in a single year, 2023. Every other year since 2020, the best-selling car was a Toyota.

(Fanbois are weird.)

I didn't expect the difference to be quite so large, but apparently, Tesla has sold about 9.72 million cars since 2008; in the same time span, Toyota has sold about 183 million.

Those rockets generate zero CO2 right? Oh wait...

It's a rounding error next to the savings from the electric cars.

This guy has actively sabotaged rail systems in multiple cities, how much of a negative impact has that had?

Let's just stop claiming he actually cares about the environment and that he just wants wealth and power and he saw a business opportunity taking over Tesla.

Actively sabotaged by doing what? California went ahead with high speed rail. How is it going? You want more of that?

So you don't remember his Hyperloop "invention" media circus targeted at California high speed rail? What about DOGE targeting the same? What about the Boring company pitching his dumb car tubes?

He's a car salesman doing what a billionaire car salesman does.

I wanted to say it could be argued his support for pro fossil fuel political candidate is hugely detrimental to the cause but then the war hiked oil price so much that this morning I saw a stat that shows global CO2 emission started to fall…

Didn't he immediately sell those CO2 savings to other companies, so they can pollute more?

He did sell them, though how much this matters is more like "were CO2 permit trading prices set correctly?" rather than something to blame Musk for.

For me personally, things like this make me question the value of the businesses rather than the environment. Like, I'm not sure if it's true this year, but in several recent years you could correctly say Musk personally made more money selling Tesla shares than Tesla made lifetime net profit, and likewise could correctly say that if all government subsidies and artificial markets were removed Tesla would not have made a profit at all.

I didn't bring it up to blame Musk, but he shouldn't get credited for saving emissions after he sold the offsets.

Mm.

Carbon trading is the "free market" solution to getting businesses to price-in what would otherwise be a free externality.

I won't praise Musk for it (at best praise goes to the governments setting up the rules), so we're probably on the same page, but it did feel like you were painting him as a villain for taking part in something that at least solves one of the common criticisms of carbon emitting industries.

Not exactly, the "free market" solution would be a carbon tax. The distinction matters here - had Musk not sold Teslas offsets, those other businesses would have paid a higher (and more accurate) price.

It may feel like that because it takes away Musks "at least he built the Autobahn" (even though the statement is of course also inaccurate for the original). But I consider it very dishonest to assign CO2 savings from electric cars to him, without also mentioning him profiting off of those emissions in other places.

... as allowed and intended by our government, and using the proceeds to build the factories that allowed them to scale production to the point where the best-selling car in the world can be electric, which otherwise would have taken longer. Having served their purpose, these emissions credits are now going away.

Doesn't change the fact that those emissions were not saved.

They will be, as the faster scaling of electric car production means more emissions will be saved going forward, and there won't be any more emissions credits offsetting them. And Tesla sold cars in places without emissions credits too. I'm sure there were more than enough of those to offset the rockets with plenty left over.

But Tesla is one of America's roadblocks to scaling EV usage. They cancelled their $25,000 EV plans after the US blocked economic competitors like BYD from entering the US market. The ostensible goal of Tesla is not to reduce emissions through democratized EVs, but to protect their bottom-line and forcibly prevent competition from undermining their profits.

It's not Elon's fault the US put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs. It's not even Trump's fault. Biden did it! You can't pin that on Elon.

Tesla isn't afraid of Chinese competition. They compete directly with BYD in China and win. Model Y outsells any BYD model. All other US automakers, on the other hand, are terrified. And for good reason.

Meanwhile, Tesla is still making a $25,000 EV. It's just not designed for personal ownership. Tesla is betting on autonomous fleets as the future of cars. But they're still electric. Shared fleets would be way more efficient than personal car ownership, so this is even better for the climate, actually.

And they're doing Semi and Megapack and Superchargers (open to all EVs) too. They're doing their own battery R&D at their own battery factory, their own lithium refining, their own solar cell production. Honestly ridiculous that you would try to paint Tesla as some kind of climate traitor.

> They compete directly with BYD in China and win. Model Y outsells any BYD model.

BYD's sales are split across multiple brands and models. BYD sells more EVs than Tesla. Why is Tesla being outsold by BYD?

BYD is one of the global top ten automakers by sales. Why isn't Tesla in the top ten?

Why isn't Tesla selling 20 million cars per year like they said they would?

Why has the Cybertruck been such a sales flop?

BYD and Geely cars can charge 10 to 70% in 5 minutes on 1.5+ megawatt chargers. Does Tesla offer anything like that capability?

BYD sells several times more different EV models in twice as many countries, yet it only totals 38% more EV units than Tesla (2025). What puts them in the top 10 is their non-EV sales, which Tesla doesn't do at all.

Cybertruck is a flop, no argument there.

The reason Tesla hasn't scaled further is that a few years ago they pivoted in strategy and are no longer heavily pursuing the consumer market with new models for personal ownership. For better or worse they are all in on autonomous fleet vehicles and Optimus. The pivot was probably a few years too early. Many think it'll never work and I'm sure you're among them, but time will tell.

So given that Tesla has pivoted to being a low volume manufacturer, why aren't they offering the same hardware capability as other players?

Porsche's got wireless charging on their cars now. Does Tesla?

Not aggressively pursuing future new consumer models is not the same thing as being a low volume manufacturer. Autonomous fleet vehicles are also not going to be low volume, either.

Low sales makes you a low volume manufacturer.

Any answer on why Tesla is so far behind on the hardware?

Model Y continues to have the highest production volume of any model in the world, and you want to call that low volume manufacturing? I'm done engaging here, have fun.

You didn't engage. You evaded.

https://leasehackr-assets.b-cdn.net/original/3X/a/9/a9a9015c...

Actually if you tank them with sustainable fuel..

He is the man with a plan a certain ideology wants to see eradicated. His existence is a intro to what western society has missed out on while coasting on past success build by people like him. If you dislike him why not leave the west?

> Actually if you tank them with sustainable fuel..

Getting Starship to be useful for Mars missions requires actually building industrial-scale Sabatier machines.

This is something he has known about, and talked about, for a long time; it's (apparently) why they're designed around methane.

However, we don't see any reports of work on such machines.

This is both bad for the environment here on Earth, and also an indicator that despite what he's been saying, Mars has been less of an interest for several years before he officially put the moon and space data centres ahead of it.

Moon v Mars seems to have more to do with what the primary customer wanted.

Starmind just happened to fit nicely with that and the current market desire for a lot more compute.

But we were already supposed to be colonizing mars a few years ago right? And we're supposed to have fleets of autonomous robotaxis that can drive across the country by themselves; where do they have those? And the hyperloop? Tunnels in LA? I could go on...

Starmind may indeed be entirely a cynical ploy to get investors banging on his doors. I think this is the only sensible reason for it, even. I really need to make time to finish that blog post…

However, merely switching from Mars to the Moon isn't by itself a reason for the complete absence of any public presentations about progress with industrial-scale Sabatier machines.

There's a lot of good use for industrial-scale Sabatier machines right now, on Earth. Use renewables to synthesise methane, the main component of natural gas: (1) Hormuz less important; (2) those gas turbines powering his ground based data centres look a lot less bad (still bad, but less bad); (3) methane-fuelled rockets look a lot greener; (4) can sell to any nation with a lot of renewable supply that wants to get into petrochemicals (though I suppose "petro" is a misnomer if it's not from rocks…)

Like, it wouldn't be entirely nuts to say this is order-of a trillion dollar opportunity, if someone got it right. At least, assuming the same playbook as the SpaceX IPO for TAMs, which I absolutely do consider to look suspiciously like they gamed a metric that allows such gaming.

"Why not leave" is an argument for elementary school playgrounds, not adult discussions

Please explain how any fuel type is "sustainable" that they're using in their rockets?

Also, please explain his plan and what "ideology" I have that makes me want to "eradicate" him?

I'm sorry I criticized your Tony Stark fantasy man

Colonizing the moon first is not a bad idea and ultimately we do need to find some way of (in the far future) mitigating the sun's expansion, whether it's moving to another planet or something

Mars is just really far. You can send lots of robots. Human beings is a tougher thing

I didn't downvote, but I might have been inclined with the rather weak appeal to "the sun's expansion"… which is about a billion years out still.

Care to tell me why I'm wrong or why you're uncaring enough to drive-by downvote?

"Mitigating the sun's expansion" is right up there with "bringing the unicorns back", in both plausibility and need. At least for the existence timeline of genus Homo.

There is a weird immature escapism involved in such sci fi story-telling. Most adults are capable of seeing that the biggest problems are internal. Inside ourselves, within families, and more broadly, on earth, itself. Hunger, injustice, the rise of dictators and those who have successfully subverted democracy, slavery and human trafficking. If he was supposedly as capable as his self-mythologizing claims ("Chess is an easy game; I won all games that I played"), he'd pick a much more earth-bound goal. Maybe reconcile with his estranged son-turned-daughter. How about that for starters? Or not get divorced for once? Is that possible for our self-confessed genius?

All of the problems you mentioned sound so much more temporary than the long-term survival of our species.

Musk's plan for the survival of the species, as far as I can tell, is to personally make as many (white) babies as possible. His talk of colonizing Mars is a pipe dream, a lure for gullible investors.

No one doubts that the work is difficult. The criticism, as the trailer makes clear in context, is not that the company is not making adequate progress, but rather that the public statements made by Musk about the progress of the company are not honest.

Which statements? Why wouldn't they play the clip of Musk saying those things if that's the case?

I am sure they do play those statements in the movie itself. The trailer exists to get your attention,not to provide all information.

If you're genuinely curious, and can't wait to watch the film, here's a starting point: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...

There are, I think, two things that the documentary is trying to do with this statement. The first is to remind people that even visionaries selling their actions on a noble cause must still be evaluated for the negative consequences of their actions. In this case, Musk is known to be the cause of quite a few deaths in the world thanks to things like eliminating USAID [1]. People like him need to be fairly evaluated not just on the good they might potentially unlock in the future, but the evil they are unlocking today.

The second thing is to point out that Musk may not be entirely honest about trying to colonize Mars, just as some politicians may campaign on a promise to make a country great again while robbing blind the rubes who vote for them.

[1] Although I think Mark Zuckerberg still beats him in the deadliest tech CEO race, given the role that Facebook plays in the Rohingya genocide.

I get annoyed by this type of comment because Musk is obviously an over the top hype man, he sees this as his job. And he has a long history of crazy predictions that didn't come true. Any other CEO spouts some obvious marketing bs and people are appropriately cynical but Musk's defenders just really want to believe.

What are some of the most egregious examples from his long history of crazy predictions?

Most of the examples I've ever seen tend to be purposeful misunderstanding, his timing being off (clearly a flaw, but common to most ambitious projects), vibes, or just factually incorrect.

He clearly has flaws, but his critics always seem to be far more flawed.

Robotaxis by 2020

18 mile hyperloop between downtown Chicago and O’Hare Airport

Humans on Mars by 2024

SpaceX would be flying private citizens around the Moon by 2018.

March 2020: "probably close to zero new cases" of covid-19 "by the end of April."

Summon an autonomous Tesla from New York to LA by 2018

Saying Tesla Autonomous by "next year" over and over for a decade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufbxvRo2rnY

A Tesla with 1,000-Kilometer range by 2017

https://leasehackr-assets.b-cdn.net/original/3X/a/9/a9a9015c...

In 2008 Musk was selling a prototype Tesla Roadster with solar panels on the roof and promised a fully solar production vehicle would be available soon. They took deposits for it. I think people still have deposits on the Roadster in 2026.

You are the sucker.

You seem to be getting different cars mixed up, so what you're saying is factually wrong. Musk never promoted that, and Tesla did complete all of the orders for the original Roadster.

Even if you were correct on the facts, the right thing to do in the face of changing circumstances can of course be to change the plan. In an alternate reality where they had sold preorders for a solar car, making it right to the customers combined with not going out of business is the better plan.

I'm not trying to insult anyone. It's only an observation of repeated patterns. Please share the solar powered Roadster deliveries. I'm not going to try to source ~20 year old marketing from Musk / Tesla. I can tell you: I thought it was awesome, I was skeptical of the solar powered promise, and it never was delivered. (or maybe it was if you can share some evidence.)

Musk collects investment money for those dreams, but the dreams change every round. Now it’s AI data centers in space, Mars is old news.

I think the problem is more that people doubt Musk's sincerity. And I wonder, to be honest, how it’s possible not to. Musk is no Wright and no Bell. He should be placed in the same category as people like Bernie Madoff, Charles Ponzi, and Gregor MacGregor. But your perspective contains another flaw: In hindsight, we see the big, daring projects that were successful. What we don’t see are the countless projects that failed. That skews the cost-benefit analysis a bit. Especially since large projects have far-reaching, often negative side effects. You can admire Hannibal for his crossing of the Alps, but no sane person would want to be one of the many soldiers who froze to death in the process.

I find it irritating that otherwise smart people fall for the constant stream of shuck and jive from Mr. Musk.

It’s all bullshit to provide air cover for his sociopathic behavior and ambition.

You auto-pre-completed my comment.

you all are missing the point. It just means all the employees are gonnna work double shift for a single pay. That's are there's to it.

They are chipping away but their real motive is not mars colonization; that is a story designed to serve the venture capital needs of here and now.

That's the truth and that is what is being said here; it is not a denial that the chipping away is happening, it is a characterization of the why and how.

Yeah. Peak exctinctionist talk is to plainly just state we're never colonizing mars, lets instead hate on those that put immense effort to trying.

He's not trying to colonize mars, he's trying to get power and wealth and for you to like him. Nothing irks this man more than someone who doubts he is a saviour. It is reasonable to demand we fix the planet we currently inhabit, rather than believe a ketamine-addict that the better solution is to just let it go to hell and move on.

If he wants power, wealth and fans then he could retire already because that would be mission accomplished. It seems that there is some other motivation.

Peak extinctionist talk is to pretend we can colonize Mars, especially without saving our planet so we have somewhere to launch from.

Also, Mars is a pipe dream of people who know more about Star Trek than space exploration.

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