Imagining Elon Musks MillionPerson Mars Colony
[Music]
you know how
there are certain days in your life that
are just seared into your memory
you can remember the day in full detail
just like it was yesterday
one of those days in my life is
september 27
- this is the day that
elon musk stood on stage and he
announced that he was going
to send a million people to mars he had
it all figured out and there was a video
that explained it
he had these gigantic rockets he had
in-orbit refueling
he had these capsules that could carry a
hundred people at a time
he was going to ship a million people to
mars
and he made it sound completely
believable
one key thing to keep in mind is that a
million people is a lot of people
think about the city of san francisco it
only contains about 800
000 people but it’s 50 square miles or
30 or 40 000 acres it’s gigantic
imagining that you can move that many
people to mars
and that you can house them and feed
them and everything else
is just spectacular his vision was so
audacious so amazing
that it nearly made my head explode my
first reaction
literally was wow oh i can’t believe
this is so amazing
my second reaction was i doubt this is
ever gonna happen
okay maybe he can get a dozen people to
mars or a hundred
but a million that’s like that’s going
to cost trillions of dollars
take infinity time it’s hard to imagine
it ever really happening but my
third reaction was this is the framework
for the
greatest thought experiment of all time
because you can do so much with the idea
of
sending a million people to mars it’s
just
an amazing thought space to work in
the thing about mars is that it’s a
completely
blank slate for human beings to draw on
there’s nothing but
rocks and sand and ice there right now
so we can do anything we want
and why wouldn’t we want to create
something really spectacular there
something where we’ve gotten rid of all
the problems and the crap that we see on
earth today
just think about it do we want there to
be war on mars
no corruption no crime
no poverty no we don’t want any of that
stuff
to infect the mars colony that we’re
going to build there
and that’s the thing that makes it such
a great thought experiment
how would you create a society that
eliminates
all of that stuff the mars colony also
gives us
hundreds of questions that we can think
about let me give you a simple example
are there gonna be dogs and cats as
pets on mars or not yes or no
which is it going to be what about cows
and pigs and chickens for
meat are we gonna have meat on mars or
not
what about things like cigarettes or
cocaine
or racism or abortion or
money like they never had money on star
trek do we actually need it on mars
one of the biggest questions that this
whole thought experiment raises
is who gets to go to mars i mean think
about it
how do we pick the people who actually
get to go
so let’s try this what if we did a
lottery
we just pick a million people to go to
mars
off of planet earth completely at random
using a lottery one advantage of this is
that we get this
wide variety this great mix of
nationalities and cultures and languages
and races
it’d be representative of planet earth
but the problem is
we would pick up a bunch of unsavory
characters in the process
so flying to mars there would be some
murderers and some rapists and some
jihadists
and some misogynists and pedophiles
and you know just think of all the
different forms of
assholary that you can think of they
would be in the mix going to mars if we
used a lottery
and this is a really interesting thing
to think about
do we want there to be on mars
just you know think about it if you’re
living in a big glass bubble
on another planet and you can’t ever
leave or go outside
do you want to be in that bubble with a
bunch of
the knee-jerk reaction you might have is
well no
obviously we would never send a bunch of
to mars
we just filter them all out we’d only
send nice people
but then this is the question that
raises
if we wouldn’t send these to
mars
why do we allow them to walk around
freely on earth
i mean why don’t we filter them out here
instead
of letting them make life miserable for
everyone on the planet
and here’s another gigantic question we
would have to ask
what socio-political economic
system would we send to mars because
surely we would not want to send
the systems that we use on earth today
to a new
utopian mars colony the systems we use
today
caused so much suffering we would have
to create something new for mars
just think about it on earth today
there’s a billion people living in
slums there are billions more who don’t
have access to clean water or sanitation
or basic
medical services that we take for
granted in the developed world
even in a country like the united states
which is highly developed
there can be extreme poverty medical
bankruptcies
giant student debt low wages for a
majority
and this is supposed to be the good case
do we want to carry all this suffering
and dysfunction with us to mars
no of course not we want mars to be a
utopia
we do not want people living in slums
peeing in buckets wondering where their
next meal will come from
on mars things should be perfect or
nearly perfect
they should be a lot better than they
are here on earth today
on mars we would want to design a
socio-political
economic system that’s much much better
than we have on earth today
we would want everyone on mars to be
approximately equal
and to have easy access to the things
they need to live
happy healthy lives we want them to be
able to have great food and water and
sanitation
we want them to have health care and
education we want them to have
stylish housing and stylish clothing and
everything
that a human being needs to have a happy
and healthy life
in other words if we’re going to build a
million person mars colony
why don’t we do it right why don’t we
take this blank
sheet of paper and build a utopia
that is absolutely perfect for the
people who are going to live there
and so here is the gigantic question
that this whole thought experiment
forces on us today
if we would obviously design a whole new
socio-economic political system to
put on planet mars when we send a
million people there
then why don’t we go and develop it and
implement it
here on earth today we could do
so much good for billions of people if
we would take the time to do this
why not do it and get it all worked out
here
and then ship it to mars why not
i’m marshall brain and thank you for
thinking about this with me today