Is This The Best Way To Leverage Great Creativity And The Ability To Initiate Effort?

I have a great deal of respect for the creativity, and drive of Mr. Musk. You also have to give him credit for at least trying to put some progressive thinking into his approach to technological development. Our "crooked wheel, but the only wheel in town" of an economic operating system being what it is, he does a better than average job of trying to balance profitable gain with some elements of social responsibility. More could always be done, of course, but you do what you can.

I just wish he'd take a step back and ask some deeper questions of his own. And make no mistake here; someone like him has a deeper responsibility to do so precisely because of their creativity, and the fact that they have accumulated counters to the degree he has; those numbers in servers that allows a single individual to initiate levels of human effort it used to take pharos, or supreme emperors, to initiate way back when.

The question I think he needs to ask himself is this: Am I leveraging my creativity, and effort initiating ability, to the best degree possible? And by leveraging, I mean are you pursuing a development approach that helps more than one positive outcome to be achieved at the same time?

This is why I think it pertinent that everyone ask: Is spending on rockets, in an increasingly crowded launching service market (because you haven't asked deeper questions about those either) helping the larger need for industrialized sized, rapid transit into low earth orbit (rather than another, high cost, inflexible, hypertube rapid transit system, on the ground -- one that would benefit so few)? Does setting up a narrowly focused, colonization of mars, by a thinly supported (if existent at all) infrastructure base, truly benefit the long term survivability of the species? Does it advance this development in a way that automatically seeks to bring the rest of the world along so that we use the effort to build much needed bridges of cooperation here?

In two or three decades we are likely to be faced with the need to be pulling habitat out of our asses. Anywhere we can. What will we do?

Building floating cities on the oceans could help for a while. Along with making the currently arid areas of the world liveable. But there's risk in that too if we depend too much only on measures planetside. And we know this is so for a host of scenarios.

That means we need an unprecedented amount of not only logistical support to and from near earth orbit. We will need a manufacturing base equally unprecedented nearby out there as well. A manufacturing base to start turning out the kind of automation infrastructure that will make building very large habitats, wherever in our system, possible. And we need to start this now even though we still don't know how, exactly, to build fully integrated habitats yet. Which means that building Gateway City on the moon will be our first step in learning how. Still a hell of a lot of things to figure out mind you, but a hell of a lot easier than trying it on the cheap, with the distances of a Mars orbit involved to boot.

Some more things to think about for what should not be considered dreams anymore. These are critically need steps folks. Steps we need to be taking now precisely because they take so long to be brought up to speed. Just like getting better at cooperating with one another, this is essential for the survival of humanity.

A PROTOTYPE SHIP IN FOUR YEARS

Elon Musk Just Released His Detailed Plans On How To Get To Mars — Here Are The Highlights

29 diggs Space

While much of it is obviously still in the planning stages, Musk argues that simply making his plans public is a valuable first step in getting us to Mars.

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Is It So Bad If The World Gets A Little Hotter? Uh, Yeah

47 diggs Wired Science

The last time it was 4 degrees warmer there was no ice at either pole and sea level was hundreds of feet higher than it is today.