I wonder how many people took the whole Mars colonization talk seriously. If Elon had been really serious about Mars colonization he would've had to commit a lot more resources to research, while reaching out to every major nation-state to get them to also commit on collaborating into making this a long-term reality. You can't brute-force a world-tier quest of this magnitude without significant global buy-in and without actually bringing in the absolute best-of-the-best of every relevant domain.
Also, Mars just kinda sucks. There's dust everywhere and it's nearly impossible to get it all off. Go outside one time in Mars and that dust will cling so tightly that it'll follow you into the cycle of reincarnation.
There is also no external motivation to colonize Mars whatsoever. I.e. if there would be an alien ship or alien structures full of technology there would be a permanent base(s) on Mars since 1980s and we would be racing who can send more people there to secure as much knowledge as possible. But because Mars is a cold desert then there is really no demand for a 1+ million city on Mars. Like building a city in a middle of Sahara. Sure it is possible, but what's the point?
Contra to Thiel and comments in this thread, something in my gut tells me Elon is still fairly serious about Mars. If humans don’t make it, then I’m pretty sure within 20 years he’ll be sending off teams of Optimus robots to walk all over it and set up a camp. Then who knows, even though Mars is inhospitable in the extreme. I think he’ll at least try and build the Mars base and then see. Also there’s no laws on Mars - Earth treaties are irrelevant at that distance so he really could set himself up as the overlord and Emperor of a whole planet. I think that’s actually his dream.
Also, anyone find it strange that he’s never been up in one of his own rockets? Unless he’s done it in secret without telling anybody (not impossible to believe even though he loves publicity) he seems pretty shy about taking trips himself. Or paranoid about dying in his own Promethean creation.
That NYT interview with Ross Douthat is just a lame attempt by Thiel to rehabilitate his image. From the interview, regarding how we as a society entered into a state of technological stagnation, and his subsequent support of Trump in 2016 as a way to "redirect the Titanic from the iceberg it was heading to, or whatever the metaphor is, to really change course as a society":
"I didn’t have great expectations about what Trump would do in a positive way, but I thought at least, for the first time in 100 years, we had a Republican who was not giving us this syrupy Bush nonsense. It was not the same as progress, but we could at least have a conversation. In retrospect, this was a preposterous fantasy."
Really? You, arguably the most influential and successful inventor of the modern age, couldn't foresee that Trump is just going to leverage his populism to further cement the power structures that brought him into power? How was that ever going to lead to societal level change in a way that would bring about an explosion of science and technological innovation?
Nah, I'd believe that Thiel (correctly) sensed that Trump was a vessel through which he could accumulate much more power and wealth, due to Trump's brazen cronyism and corruption.
So now Thiel needs to somehow distance himself from Musk, Trump, and everyone else to try and recover whatever dignity he can. The only good news I can see is that, if he truly has any sort of crystal ball, he senses the winds starting to shift and the political power of MAGA waning.
His life mission is control, Mars was just a means to an end. He’s not going to get to Mars, and he very publicly destroyed any political capital he had on Earth.
Like Thiel, just another power hungry tech bro wrapping themselves in the idea of progress and humanity for PR. Define “progress” and for whom.
I’m no Peter Thiel fan, but I love his critique of DOGE:
> I had a conversation with Elon a few weeks ago about this. He said we’re going to have a billion humanoid robots in the U.S. in 10 years. And I said: Well, if that’s true, you don’t need to worry about the budget deficits because we’re going to have so much growth, the growth will take care of this.
Right. I guess either way, dystopia or utopia, if we have 1B humanoid robots in 2035, literally no one will remember saving $10M by cutting one scientific grant program.
Robot arm vacuums were just released few months ago. It can barely pick up socks and some types of slippers. There's still a long way to folding clothes.
Genuine question; what even would make going to Mars economically viable? It we mean by economically viable something like "when the amount of wealth we generate, where wealth is stuff that makes the lives of humans better, exceeds that which we expended to do it" there's not a lot that springs to mind that would make going to Mars an economic proposition.
"Economically viable" is not a concept that even applies here. There is no profit to be extracted on Mars besides raw resources, and it will basically never be profitable to ship raw materials between planets with chemical rockets.
Any hypothetical money to be made on a Mars colony will take generations to become apparent.
However, the technological advances required to build a Mars base and put humans there is within our grasp today. The developments associated with such a program would be of incalculable value to humanity, but are not directly monopolizable and monetizable in the immediate term.
So, no. It will never be economically viable to go to Mars because that question makes no sense. It would make economic sense to invest in asteroid mining because there are returns to be seen within your lifetime. There will be no such returns from any planet-based colony for a long, long time.
> The developments associated with such a program would be of incalculable value to humanity
Compared to what? The cuts to medical and other research necessary to pay for the incalculable money pit that Mars exploration is? In fact, fund research that has some value for humanity now and some of it will be useful for planetary missions in the future, whenever it's possible to do it without strain.
It's insane to waste public money on boondoggles for billionaires, they can fund their Mars missions themselves. Bon Voyage!
It's expensive to send anything into space, let alone make it to Mars. Chemical rockets are not cheap, even when you can recover the boosters and refurbish the engines. Comparatively, even visiting Mars makes a moon mission look like a cakewalk.
I wonder how many people took the whole Mars colonization talk seriously. If Elon had been really serious about Mars colonization he would've had to commit a lot more resources to research, while reaching out to every major nation-state to get them to also commit on collaborating into making this a long-term reality. You can't brute-force a world-tier quest of this magnitude without significant global buy-in and without actually bringing in the absolute best-of-the-best of every relevant domain.
Also, Mars just kinda sucks. There's dust everywhere and it's nearly impossible to get it all off. Go outside one time in Mars and that dust will cling so tightly that it'll follow you into the cycle of reincarnation.
There is also no external motivation to colonize Mars whatsoever. I.e. if there would be an alien ship or alien structures full of technology there would be a permanent base(s) on Mars since 1980s and we would be racing who can send more people there to secure as much knowledge as possible. But because Mars is a cold desert then there is really no demand for a 1+ million city on Mars. Like building a city in a middle of Sahara. Sure it is possible, but what's the point?
Slow down there, Space Anakin.
Contra to Thiel and comments in this thread, something in my gut tells me Elon is still fairly serious about Mars. If humans don’t make it, then I’m pretty sure within 20 years he’ll be sending off teams of Optimus robots to walk all over it and set up a camp. Then who knows, even though Mars is inhospitable in the extreme. I think he’ll at least try and build the Mars base and then see. Also there’s no laws on Mars - Earth treaties are irrelevant at that distance so he really could set himself up as the overlord and Emperor of a whole planet. I think that’s actually his dream.
Also, anyone find it strange that he’s never been up in one of his own rockets? Unless he’s done it in secret without telling anybody (not impossible to believe even though he loves publicity) he seems pretty shy about taking trips himself. Or paranoid about dying in his own Promethean creation.
Human foot on Mars is a multi-year research project, but NASA is still at the stage of planning the moon base.
This article is based upon an interview from NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/peter-thiel-antic....
That NYT interview with Ross Douthat is just a lame attempt by Thiel to rehabilitate his image. From the interview, regarding how we as a society entered into a state of technological stagnation, and his subsequent support of Trump in 2016 as a way to "redirect the Titanic from the iceberg it was heading to, or whatever the metaphor is, to really change course as a society":
"I didn’t have great expectations about what Trump would do in a positive way, but I thought at least, for the first time in 100 years, we had a Republican who was not giving us this syrupy Bush nonsense. It was not the same as progress, but we could at least have a conversation. In retrospect, this was a preposterous fantasy."
Really? You, arguably the most influential and successful inventor of the modern age, couldn't foresee that Trump is just going to leverage his populism to further cement the power structures that brought him into power? How was that ever going to lead to societal level change in a way that would bring about an explosion of science and technological innovation?
Nah, I'd believe that Thiel (correctly) sensed that Trump was a vessel through which he could accumulate much more power and wealth, due to Trump's brazen cronyism and corruption.
So now Thiel needs to somehow distance himself from Musk, Trump, and everyone else to try and recover whatever dignity he can. The only good news I can see is that, if he truly has any sort of crystal ball, he senses the winds starting to shift and the political power of MAGA waning.
I think we have to conclude that Trump's actual gift is convincing people he's easily convinced of things, so they're likely to support him.
This is unlikely. It's his life's mission.
His life mission is control, Mars was just a means to an end. He’s not going to get to Mars, and he very publicly destroyed any political capital he had on Earth.
Like Thiel, just another power hungry tech bro wrapping themselves in the idea of progress and humanity for PR. Define “progress” and for whom.
https://gizmodo.com/peter-thiel-says-elon-musk-doesnt-unders...
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-spacex-mars-la...
I’m no Peter Thiel fan, but I love his critique of DOGE:
> I had a conversation with Elon a few weeks ago about this. He said we’re going to have a billion humanoid robots in the U.S. in 10 years. And I said: Well, if that’s true, you don’t need to worry about the budget deficits because we’re going to have so much growth, the growth will take care of this.
You mean you won't have to worry about the budget deficits because society will probably have collapsed.
Right. I guess either way, dystopia or utopia, if we have 1B humanoid robots in 2035, literally no one will remember saving $10M by cutting one scientific grant program.
Ah yes society is made up of folding clothes and cleaning up after cooking.
And construction, retail, warehousing, mining, farming, social services, etc.
We aren't going to have 1 billion clothes folding robots.
Let's solve that first maybe?
Robot arm vacuums were just released few months ago. It can barely pick up socks and some types of slippers. There's still a long way to folding clothes.
People change
His life mission is to be filthy rich. He achieved that.
Everything else is just propaganda
Doesn’t science need to progress more before it’s economically viable?
We got to the moon 50 years ago and still haven’t been back. It’s expensive to send humans into space.
Let’s get those Tesla robots to Mars… and Titan
Genuine question; what even would make going to Mars economically viable? It we mean by economically viable something like "when the amount of wealth we generate, where wealth is stuff that makes the lives of humans better, exceeds that which we expended to do it" there's not a lot that springs to mind that would make going to Mars an economic proposition.
"Economically viable" is not a concept that even applies here. There is no profit to be extracted on Mars besides raw resources, and it will basically never be profitable to ship raw materials between planets with chemical rockets.
Any hypothetical money to be made on a Mars colony will take generations to become apparent.
However, the technological advances required to build a Mars base and put humans there is within our grasp today. The developments associated with such a program would be of incalculable value to humanity, but are not directly monopolizable and monetizable in the immediate term.
So, no. It will never be economically viable to go to Mars because that question makes no sense. It would make economic sense to invest in asteroid mining because there are returns to be seen within your lifetime. There will be no such returns from any planet-based colony for a long, long time.
> The developments associated with such a program would be of incalculable value to humanity
Compared to what? The cuts to medical and other research necessary to pay for the incalculable money pit that Mars exploration is? In fact, fund research that has some value for humanity now and some of it will be useful for planetary missions in the future, whenever it's possible to do it without strain.
It's insane to waste public money on boondoggles for billionaires, they can fund their Mars missions themselves. Bon Voyage!
Is it as yet economically viable to create AGI?
It's expensive to send anything into space, let alone make it to Mars. Chemical rockets are not cheap, even when you can recover the boosters and refurbish the engines. Comparatively, even visiting Mars makes a moon mission look like a cakewalk.
Inventions of SpaceX made space trips much cheaper: https://spaceinsider.tech/2023/08/16/how-much-does-it-cost-t...
Now it reaches just 2k$ per kilogram.
Hotel I’m staying in Fiji is using starlink for about 30 rooms. It works incredibly well.
There’s a fiber there too, but I assume someone is so incompetent to make it reliable and affordable that a $500 dish is able to serve entire resort.
Let’s have that discussion about manned vs unmanned space flight again.
It’s been 11 years since HN thought manned was better.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279
Where’s the guy who told us crab fishing in Alaska is also dangerous?