This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

I‘ve always called it the Fat Elvis principle. If you are wildly successful, people will always tell you what you want to hear. Every idea you have is a good one and every joke you tell is very funny, no matter how many times you’ve told it. And every time you begin to think you’re putting on a little weight, everyone argues against it.

Shitting on the bosses’ brilliant ideas is career suicide. Never mind your silly objections about costs or practicality! We’re dreaming here! We’s building a future here and don’t need no realists pointing out all the impractical impossibilities! The boss is a genius; he’ll figure it out!

So here is the plan in a nutshell, with the primary accent being on nut. Elon Musk is afraid human consciousness is in danger of dying out and so aligns himself with the king. Oh, such a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, after a few joints and a couple of stiff drinks. The inhibitions fall away, and he becomes SUPER ELON! Savior of humanity and boy wonder [Insert theme music here] all rolled into one! [Truth, Justice and the Elon way!]

Elon takes a Tommy Chong toke and says, “Yeah! I can see it! I’ll build rocket ships like, Model T’s And I’ll start a colony on Mars to save humanity.” Carnegie built libraries, and Melon gave heavily to universities. Kettering built hospitals, even Rockefeller might give you a dime. But Elon wants to build a monument to his own greatness! He’s going to save humanity! No thanks necessary, he plans to get rich while doing it.

Why starting from the word go, a successful Mars colony of one million former Earthling colonists living on the planet Elon, in the state and county of Elonville and city of Elonapolis, all in just twenty years! Elon Ford will turn out Star liners like Pinto’s making space travel so cheap, anyone can afford it. Much the same way Boeing has built so many airliners, air travel to Europe is almost free. Medically, it’s called megalomania. Henry Ford built a museum to honor the America he helped to destroy. Elon follows in his footsteps except with the whole world this time. “Follow me! I’ve got a plan to save you puny humans!

Now you take your seat as they fly you into orbit. Then wait, while six other flights bring up the fuel necessary for the next leg of your journey. That reads seven launches for every crewed trip to Mars. So, one hundred crewed launches require seven hundred launches, does that sound efficient to you? Strap in and make yourself comfortable because the trip is going to take seven to nine months. So, most of the crew compartment will be taken up with food and water for the trip. Not since the sailing of the Ark has there been a more fanciful and imaginary journey.

Our forefathers only had to contend with the unknown wilderness and Noah with high water. Elon will have to contend with no breathable oxygen or livable climate. But he’s a genius, he’ll figure it out! Unlike Earth, Mars has no protective radiation belt around it. Making outdoors lethal and making terraforming impossible. It’s your best chance ever to live inside a bubble. Now this is the future they’s planning.

Robots will mine stuff common on Earth at incredible cost. And then the robots will build the colony while we watch from inside the bubble. And if the robot’s breakdown, they plan for other robots to go fix them. And other robots to supervise them and other robots to clean up after them. “Stay off my clean floor Dave!” The robots will do everything leaving us with the question. What are we supposed to be doing here besides watching all this industrial glory and majesty out our window?

Oh, it’s going to be wonderful, just like Earth with underfunded overcrowded schools and overpriced apartments. Shopping centers with the latest in Martian fashions for the Elon’s day parade! Parks and playgrounds where you and your Martian mutt can put on your space suits and take a walk and enjoy the blank and depressing scenery. Like life in a steel mill slag heap living in a cave watching the robot’s labor out the window. Wondering about the existential meaning of life and why we are here! Here! On Mars I mean! Here!

What the hell are we doing here as spectators overseeing a bunch of robots or working at the Space Walmart? What’s our purpose besides an intellectual repository for all of mankind’s accumulated bullshit. Columbus sailed in 1492 and the Battle of Hastings was in 1066 important knowledge to know on Mars. “Four score and seven years ago.” Where life could become even more meaningless and depressing than life on Earth as a Martian caveman. Painting crude images on the cave walls “Drink Coca Cola” or “Hang Elon Musk!”

According to Nostra Elon domus, reality be dammed, it’s all possible! So, what! There’s no oxygen or  plant life! “We’ll plant cave gardens and grow $80,000 heads of lettuce and $6,000 tomatoes We’ll work around it! We’ll build factories that make stuff, and we’ll all get drunk over the weekend while watching Martian robot football. Go Fightin Red Elons!

No one is going to Mars without a compelling good reason to go. You couldn’t pick up pure gold off the surface of Mars without the profits being eaten up by the transportation costs. Maybe, we can build semiconductor factories and sell cheap electronics? Then we can build better caves to live in with more windows, but with the Ultraviolet rays you should probably limit looking out the window and only watch on the TV monitor.

Perhaps on Mars your life doesn’t need any real purpose or meaning. Just being there is reason enough. To be a surviving sliver of humanity on a Martian outpost should human civilization reach its logical conclusion. If he wasn’t rich, they would surely throw a net over him. If you’re rich, you’re eccentric and maybe brilliant or a bullshit artist, but if you’re poor you’re just crazy as fuck.

There is one very compelling reason NOT to colonize Mars besides being a poor candidate for colonization. There is no money in it and a billionaire already knows that.  But when you make your living with your mouth you must always keep the hoosters, weed benders and investors overawed by a babbling brook of brilliant bullshit. “We’re gonna have Domino’s pizza and door to door space Mormons! Two Tesla’s in every space garage! And a space chicken in every pot!”

“The future is fun. The future is a fair for everyone but no fair for anybody. You may have already won! You may already be there!” – The Firesign Theater