So Musk has breezily announced that going to Mars is actually too hard and could take twenty years... (nobody's laughing because you can only laugh at the same joke for so long.

So Musk has breezily announced that going to Mars is actually too hard and could take twenty years... (nobody's laughing because you can only laugh at the same joke for so long. But 20 years is ludicrously optimistic)

...

So instead he's going to colonize the Moon, which will only take ten years.

And you know, as per usual, he's focusing on literally *ONE* task in a megaproject (the rockets) and battling to even get that done in time.

It's like promising to build a new city within a decade but all you have are brick layers, and you've gotten pretty good at laying bricks and you hire the best bricklayers and whenever somebody asks about roads or city planning or sewage or management or building enough of an economy that people will want to live there and starts businesses there so the people who live there can work there, and water and zoning and governance and so on for hours, and you say "Yes, of course there will be other challenges that need resolving but I'm confident that with my wicked fast brick-laying skills we can build more square meters per hour than our nearest competitor, IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE SAVE HUMANITY Because what if an asteroid hits the other cities.

So Musk has breezily announced that going to Mars is actually too hard and could take twenty years... (nobody's laughing because you can only laugh at the same joke for so long. But 20 years is ludicrously optimistic)

...

So instead he's going to colonize the Moon, which will only take ten years.

And you know, as per usual, he's focusing on literally *ONE* task in a megaproject (the rockets) and battling to even get that done in time.

It's like promising to build a new city within a decade but all you have are brick layers, and you've gotten pretty good at laying bricks and you hire the best bricklayers and whenever somebody asks about roads or city planning or sewage or management or building enough of an economy that people will want to live there and starts businesses there so the people who live there can work there, and water and zoning and governance and so on for hours, and you say "Yes, of course there will be other challenges that need resolving but I'm confident that with my wicked fast brick-laying skills we can build more square meters per hour than our nearest competitor, IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE SAVE HUMANITY Because what if an asteroid hits the other cities.

Or to put it another way "The problem of colonizing another world is too hard to do in 20 years, so we'll shave off 9 months transit time and now we can do it in 10 years"

So Musk has breezily announced that going to Mars is actually too hard and could take twenty years... (nobody's laughing because you can only laugh at the same joke for so long. But 20 years is ludicrously optimistic)

...

So instead he's going to colonize the Moon, which will only take ten years.

And you know, as per usual, he's focusing on literally *ONE* task in a megaproject (the rockets) and battling to even get that done in time.

It's like promising to build a new city within a decade but all you have are brick layers, and you've gotten pretty good at laying bricks and you hire the best bricklayers and whenever somebody asks about roads or city planning or sewage or management or building enough of an economy that people will want to live there and starts businesses there so the people who live there can work there, and water and zoning and governance and so on for hours, and you say "Yes, of course there will be other challenges that need resolving but I'm confident that with my wicked fast brick-laying skills we can build more square meters per hour than our nearest competitor, IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE SAVE HUMANITY Because what if an asteroid hits the other cities.

So Musk has breezily announced that going to Mars is actually too hard and could take twenty years... (nobody's laughing because you can only laugh at the same joke for so long. But 20 years is ludicrously optimistic)

...

So instead he's going to colonize the Moon, which will only take ten years.

And you know, as per usual, he's focusing on literally *ONE* task in a megaproject (the rockets) and battling to even get that done in time.

It's like promising to build a new city within a decade but all you have are brick layers, and you've gotten pretty good at laying bricks and you hire the best bricklayers and whenever somebody asks about roads or city planning or sewage or management or building enough of an economy that people will want to live there and starts businesses there so the people who live there can work there, and water and zoning and governance and so on for hours, and you say "Yes, of course there will be other challenges that need resolving but I'm confident that with my wicked fast brick-laying skills we can build more square meters per hour than our nearest competitor, IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE SAVE HUMANITY Because what if an asteroid hits the other cities.

@uastronomer Maybe someone told Musk that Mars has no magnetosphere and that everyone who goes there would be zizzed by cosmic rays if they ever went outside.