Ask HN: What good does running Twitter have to do with getting to mars?

Managing and running something isn't the same as owning it. Musk might switch out executives and management with different people and leave Twitter to itself.

Need a bullhorn to tell the masses to head towards the interplanetary shuttles in an orderly fashion.

> make life multi-planetary

That's just BS he sells to gullible people to separate them from their money. Like all the cryonics companies popping in California and Arizona promising fools to bring them back from death.

It's cult/religions 101 : explotaition of an impossible desire for monetary gain.

Social media will play a role when we're heading to Mars. Because we need the political will to do it, and social media is good at hyping up that will. The fact we haven't put humans on Mars yet is disappointing. It doesn't matter who's running Twitter, social media will stir up hype regardless. Musk just wants a new toy to play with.

The success of a product like a Tesla or anything really is most often less dependent on quality than it is on marketing hype. Getting financing for large undertakings like going to Mars is partially dependant on getting people interested. Even NASA does try to stir the pot before they get their budgets approved. So a service like Twitter might fit in the portfolio of a lot of companies.

But maybe he just sees a future in the business if Twitter can successfully monetize and as far as I know it is profitable through advertising even now. If he does influence Twitter and improve the "free speech" problem, I think he could seriously improve the platform and make it more interesting and inclusive. If he wants to implement an ID system for every user, I think there is just another business incentive behind it and he saw the the current demography is ready to be milked.

I don't think Elon will take an active role in running Twitter. In fact, he will probably spend just as much time thinking about Twitter as he already does today. He will install a CEO willing to follow his directions/philosophy. The takeover is more about freeing Twitter's governance from the current board, who have stifled the development of innovative new features due to fear of losing users.

> It has been said that Elon Musk makes all decisions through the prism of whether that decision get's humans closer to having self-sustaining life on mars, or to "make life multi-planetary".

By who, lol? Elon’s a marketer at heart and his greatest trick is convincing his followers that he’s not.

What does Nikola Tesla have to do with battery-powered cars if they are not run wirelessly? I must be missing something.

This might give you some insight:

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1518767238081171456

Propaganda does wonders

Uhh, he's full of shit?

Controlling a major social media outlet is an important step for the image management necessary to sell Musk’s vision of turning Mars into a company town worked by debt slaves.

You’re referring to the interview by Joe Rogan w/ Garrett Reisman [1], and what you wrote was not what was said. What was said was that every major decision taken at SpaceX was gauged by whether or not it brought humanity closer to self-sustainable life on Mars.

Besides, why presume to know better? Don’t you think he already knows it’s added responsibility? Of course he does.

Musk knows how to properly allocate his time, and how to delegate the task of handling Twitter to someone else.

His involvement in ventures like OpenAI and Neuralink never stopped Tesla or SpaceX from accomplishing anything, so why start worrying now?

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GNG6ZzDh9C8

Elon Musk is not a fool and everybody in the space community knows that he is not really working on a colony on Mars.

Then why does he say so? The NASA has understood after Apollo that huge budgets require large political support, hence huge public opinion support.

Going to the Moon has cost 4% of the US budget during 15 years or so.

The world space community knows that humans do badly in space in general ; Mars is no better because of cosmic rays. A colony on Mars would have to be underground. In fact, the whole space community knows that robots are much more efficient and far, far less costly.

The International Space Station has a shallow bottom line in terms of Science, beyond the effects of lack of gravity on humans. I discussed of these effects with the official physician of an European astronaut: it's quite worse than publicly acknowledged. It's not a secret, it's just that journalists don't really do their job on the issue. They would not need to "investigate" in a Watergate way but just to circumvent the press departments of NASA and/or ESA in Europe.

The public opinion wants the dream. The NASA has heavily invested in filming and sharing the expeditions. And they are great at it.

In Europe, Thomas Pesquet is the incarnation of ESA: good-looking, super bright, truly a nice guy by nature, communicative enthusiasm... We all like him. But it would be fun if a journalist calculated the science / communication ratio of his time aboard the ISS. Something like 20% maybe and only because he needs to have something to talk about. Otherwise a robot could have conducted the experiments. Except for the experiments on his own body but... what for, since there is no scientific nor technical rationality for humans in space anymore?

But sending humans instead of robots implies a tenfold budget. So the dream of humans in space / on Mars / on the Moon is vital to maintain a large space industry.

The proof of this is... SpaceX. They do better than NASA and ESA for a fraction of the cost.

But SpaceX has an issue here: NASA, ESA and other space agencies are... its clients. SpaceX wants deep-pocketed clients. So SpaceX must participate in fuelling the dream of humans in space.

The ISS is old now and we have seen it all. The movie "Gravity" was great but also the coffin of space stations orbiting Earth. It's a bit like car races: for most people, me included, we only watch... if there is an impressive accident, on YouTube. On TV, following a car race is just a bore. Another live feed from the ISS? Well... who cares? Thomas Pesquet did super well the last five years, exploiting the ISS to its maximum. To fuel the dream.

So, what's next? The storytelling around robots on Mars surface was a great success. Rosetta and the comet was super exciting too. But we are used to it now... However NASA made a brilliant stunt of the tiny helicopter on Mars: first fly on another planet. I loved it. The Webb telescope... well super interesting for Science and technology guys like us here but for the public opinion... It's just OK. Children don't care for example and it tells a lot. And it's only a 10 billion-dollar project. The ISS amounts to 140 billions.

So what's next for maintaining the over-large space industry? A base on the Moon. That's realistic. And SpaceX rockets will enable it.

But Elon Musk can not been seen as a mogul so influential that a inhabited base on the Moon is budgeted. If he was on TV all the time selling us a Moon base - which is what he really wants - he would be stealing the dream sold by his own clients.

The NASA wants to be again the center of attention like during Apollo. And to get the hundreds of billions it needs. SpaceX? Just an efficient commodity provider in the dream, transportation.

But Elon Musk wants his share of attention too. He can't focus his communication on the Moon base? Let's invent a colony on Mars!

Everybody is happy: it promotes the humans in space, Musk is the dr...