From the guy who brought us Tiny Sub:

Musk? Because his name is...sorry,
I'd like to say I'm better than that, but
I think we both know that's not true.

Just so we're clear, Elon Musk can't like, own Mars, right? I ask because he held a secret meeting in Boulder, Colorado last week to discuss plans for colonizing the cold, airless wasteland and historically people...ok, mainly white people, seem to have a notion that if you go somewhere, you own somewhere. The Americas, Africa, India, Australia...it's not a great track record. So I just think it's time we, as a planet, come to an understanding that Mars isn't up for grabs no matter who puts their distinctive musk on it first.

So the meeting, called a 'Mars Workshop,' because 'secret, closed door meeting to discuss conquest of Mars' would sound...you know, crazy.

Not to mention futile.

Nothing terrible has ever come
out of secret meetings, right?

The workshop included scientists and academics from a broad range of backgrounds and organizations including NASA, but Musk asked them all to keep their attendance secret and this is kind of where I get squidgy on the subject. I'm all for exploring space, that's awesome. But not that Elon Musk asked me or anything, I can't get behind that exploration being sponsored and branded and just another innovation from the guy that brought us that stupid rescue sub he threw a tantrum about.

Remember that? When Elon Musk, unsolicited, built and shipped a child sized rescue submarine to help get those kids out of a cave in Thailand? That was great and all, but when the Thai military got the kids out, Musk threw a Trump-worthy tantrum and started calling everyone pedophiles. Is that the kind of person we want to make Viceroy of Mars?

"I mean, they've been down there eighteen days, they couldn't
wait another week? And then I'm an asshole for asking them
to put a couple of them beck in there so I could rescue them."

-Elon, first of his name,

ruler of the Red Planet

SpaceX: "There's a good chance you'll die..."

-SpaceX's ill-advised 

marketing campaign 

The point of this get together was to discuss advancing plans to put humans on Mars by 2024 which, yikes, is not that far away. It's a prospect that even Musk believes is fraught with danger. Speaking at South by Southwest this year he said:

"For the people who go to Mars, it'll be far more dangerous...Difficult, dangerous, good chance you'll die. Excitement for those who survive."

-Elon Mu-holy shit, what is wrong with him?

Wait, does he have a Genesis Device?
Because that would make this a lot easier.

So much danger he himself wouldn't dream of risking his own life. Besides, he's just too damn valuable. No really. And I get that, I wouldn't get in his stupid Mars commuter ship either. My issue is that he's so gung-ho about something that's not only incredibly dangerous-for other people-but also something that a lot of actual, non-rich scientists aren't sure is even attainable with available technology. So unless SpaceX is sitting on a Genesis Device Musk hasn't told us about, we might have to look into trying to make this one a little more habitable.

"But that probably won't happen, right?"

-Humans

And I get that this is what Musk is trying to do, give the human race somewhere else to go just in case, I don't know, we end up ruining our climate with centuries of industrial pollution. And that's a laudable aim...the planet B I mean, not ruining this one. It's just a laudable aim I wish was being explored by like an international team of scientists with purely humanitarian motivations and a willingness to wait until the technology is mature instead of some bored rich guy with a cavalier attitude towards other people's safety who once shot a Tesla at Mars just for the hell of it.

Maybe I'm just prejudiced against the ultra-rich but when someone is famously kind of an asshole and willing to cram people into a SpaceX® brand rocket and launch them towards a frigid, radiation-baked hellscape with a better than 50/50 chance of dying horribly, I'm not sure we should be trusting him with the fate of the human race.

It's starting to look like he shouldn't even be trusted with a Twitter account.