Tag Archives: elon musk

December 2021 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Mass migration driven by climate change-triggered disasters could be the emerging big issue for 2022 and beyond. Geopolitical instability is a likely result, not to mention enormous human suffering.

Most hopeful story: Covid-19 seems to be “disappearing” in Japan, or at least was before the Omicron wave. Maybe lessons could be learned. It seems possible that East Asian people have at least some genetic defenses over what other ethnic groups have, but I would put my money on tight border screening and an excellent public health care system. Okay, now I’m starting to feel a bit depressed again, sitting here in the U.S. where we can’t have these nice things thanks to our ignorant politicians.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Time reminded us of all the industries Elon Musk has disrupted so far: human-controlled, internal-combustion-fueled automobiles; spaceflight; infrastructure construction (I don’t know that he has really achieved any paradigm shifts here, but not for lack of trying), “artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, payment systems and cryptocurrency.” I’m not sure I follow a couple of these, but I think they missed satellites.

Time person of the year Elon Musk

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Hugo Drax…I mean…Elon Musk is Time’s man…I mean…person of the year for 2021. I guess I’m okay with it, since I am interested in electric cars, self-driving cars, and space travel.

He sees his mission as solving the globe’s most intractable challenges, along the way disrupting multiple industries across two decades. These include what was once the core American creation, combustion-engine automobiles, and what was once the core American aspiration, spaceflight, as well as a litany of other manifestations of our present and future: infrastructure construction, artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, payment systems and increasingly money itself through his dalliances with cryptocurrencies.

TIme

the Hyper-tunnel

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Amid all the talk of the Hyperloop, I have figured that the technology would be limited by the fact that digging tunnels is hard and expensive. It turns out, I somehow missed that Elon Musk has thrown his energy into tunneling technology too. I’m a little skeptical, but he certainly has a track record of success. I think he knows how to hire smart engineers to figure out the practical details, which is what engineers are good at, and then inject his companies with a heavy dose of big picture creative thinking and risk tolerance, which is what engineers are bad at.

Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says his ambitious tunnel-boring endeavor, aptly named The Boring Company, has officially started digging underneath Los Angeles. Musk announced the news on Twitter, where he said “Godot,” the Samuel Beckett-inspired name of the company’s tunnel boring machine, had completed the the first segment of a tunnel in the Southern California metropolis. Prior to today, it was unclear how long it would take Musk to convince the city to allow him to move the experimental effort beyond the SpaceX parking lot in Hawthorne.

Elon Musk’s new spaceship

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Here’s a video from Space X on their vision for a ship that can go to Mars and back as soon as 2025:

According to KurzweilAI:

In a talk on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk laid out engineering details to establish a permanent, self-sustaining civilization of a million people on Mars, with an initial flight as soon as 2024.

SpaceX is designing a massive reusable Interplanetary Transport System spacecraft with cabins. The trip would initially cost $500,000 per person, with a long-term goal of 100 passengers per trip.

Musk plans to make humanity a “multiplanetary species” to ensure survival in case of a calamity like an asteroid strike. “This is really about minimizing existential risk and having a tremendous sense of adventure,” he said.