The only reason I can see to be patient with Musk’s Mars fantasies is the hope that it provides a modest distraction from his more sordid interests and as a way to keep SpaceX productive. The utter desolation of Mars cannot be overstated: lack of atmosphere and magnetosphere means lethally high radiation levels will keep everyone buried deep underground; little different than colonizing the Moon.
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Mars has an atmosphere, but it would mean breathing a mix of “95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, traces of oxygen, carbon monoxide, water, methane and other gases, along with a lot of dust” – at an atmospheric pressure equivalent to an altitude of 50,000 feet on earth. In earth’s atmosphere the “zone of death” is around 21,000 feet, so yes, wear a space suit. Another aspect of Trump-supporting Musk is his sanguine approach to venusiforming of our atmosphere. Humans already breathe an atmosphere never encountered during the 6 or 7 million years of recent hominid evolution. This should be disconcerting news for any policymaker in any country, but the change in atmosphperic chemistry and geophysical transformations are typically discussed in the media in terms of “events”. Decisions, not events, are what matters in the policy sphere, and practically all decisions in recent decades embrace the notion of overshoot and technological fix. Most movie tropes about the future also assume some “event”, a plague, war, alien invasion or geophysical absurdity (Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978 version, 2012/Day After Tomorrow, Geostorm, Last of Us) that gives a clean multi-century path for the planet to recover for a reduced number of humans. Alternatively, we have forms of the Christian solipsistic fantasy of a complete destruction of the planet plus deus ex machina (Day the Earth Stood Still Keanu version, When Worlds Collide “You crackpot scientists! Nothing is going to happen.” version), while policy or lack thereof moves us ineluctably toward shittier conditions. Isn’t politics about how a society attempts to seek its least shitty position, and if not has some second-best equilibrium to fall back on?
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The article posits one of the most tenuous connections I’ve read in years.
An interesting theory and plausible enough given ideal conditions like a reasonably well-informed, moderately rational populace but I can’t think of much empirical support for it at the moment.
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Ever been to Switzerland?
Yes.
A fairly close approximation to the ideal I’d guess although IIRC the cantons can be rather tribal. My mother’s side of the family were Swiss-German.
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