Not if Elon Musk has anything to say about it, there won’t be. Because everyone there is going to look like him.

At least, that’s what the New York Times would have us believe — though Musk, already the father of twelve (that we know of), denies that he has volunteered his sperm for the purpose of populating the Red Planet. The problem is: Whom do we believe?

The New York Times has long been known as the news source that gives us “all the news that’s fit to print.” Musk gives the world kids named Techno Mechanicus and Exa Dark Siderael — and a social medium he felt compelled to rename “X.”

So we’ve come to expect pretty nearly anything from old Elon over the years. But what is this latest dust-up about?

Apparently, running SpaceX, Tesla and X hasn’t been enough to keep him busy (thus, those 12 kids). His continuing fascination with the possibility of colonizing Mars has inevitably led him to a concern as to the eventual permanent population of Earth 2.0 — because Earth 1.0 (that’s us) is where the first Mars residents will come from. And we don’t want to choose just anyone, do we? After all, why bring our problems with us when we actually have an opportunity to leave them behind, presumably to die out over time?

Are you getting the point here? It’s called, I believe, “selective breeding,” which has been mentioned as far back as the 4th Century B.C., in no less worthy a publication than Plato’s Republic. It has also more recently been known as “Eugenics,” which chillingly summons up images of Adolph Hitler’s plans for a “master race.”

So is Elon Musk now advocating that we give it another shot (so to speak)?

Well, yes and no. Maybe. Because no one really knows what goes on in his mind at any given time, do we? But in response to the New York Times he stated: “I have not fwiw [for what it’s worth] ‘volunteered my sperm’” . . . followed by a laughing emoji. He added that “No one at SpaceX has been directed to work on a Mars city. When people have asked to do so, I’ve said we need to focus on getting there first.” [Elon Musk on X, July 11, 2024, as reported by Eva Roytburg, Fortune, July 11, 2024.]

According to the Fortune report, however, “Musk reportedly has employees working more than 100 hours a week in windowless rooms to engineer every element of the plan, from the design of small-domed habitats to spacesuits to child-rearing on the planet.“

Goodness knows what else they’re doing in those windowless rooms, because in 2013, Musk told Raw Science that he would like to create his own species uniquely bred to survive Mars’ harsh conditions. In an interview, he stated: “I think it’s quite likely that we’d want to bioengineer new organisms that are better suited to living on Mars. Humanity’s kind of done that over time, by sort of selective breeding.” [Fortune, id.]

So what would we call this new breed? Musk-o-vites? Or would that too easily be confused with the existing Muscovites: those poor folks already being re-engineered by Vladimir Putin over there in Russia? Too close for comfort? How about Musk-et-eers? Nah — already done. Musk-rats, then? Any suggestions from the gallery?

STOP IT! Don’t laugh. It’s really not funny . . .

Well, yeah, it is, sort of . . . when you think about a civilization comprised of little Elons, slaving away in windowless rooms on Mars, trying to figure out how to colonize Jupiter next.

But seriously, folks . . . the whole sperm thing aside . . .

No, really, cut it out.

The whole sperm thing aside, Musk — and NASA — are in fact looking at Mars as the possible salvation of the human race. NASA says they don’t expect to land any humans there until the 2040s, though Musk the Magnificent says it could be done in less than ten years. “For sure in 30, civilization secured,” he tweeted (or “X-ed,” because you can’t really “tweet” without Twitter, can you?). But wait — is it ten years or thirty? Because thirty years is later than the 2040s, so which is it: Sooner? Or later? As usual, trying to understand what Elon Musk is saying has left me thoroughly confused.

Meanwhile, he has adopted another new ideology, allegedly prescribed to by some of his Silicon Valley peers as well: Pronatalism. While seemingly as wackadoodle as the rest of his musings, it does offer a certain logic as the first step toward the whole Eugenics thing.

But that’s a whole other nest of hornets. So stay tuned for more on this fascinating subject tomorrow. And in the meantime, as I continue my research into the 21st Century world of Elon “Flash Gordon” Musk . . .

I can’t help wondering what my beloved Bubbe would have thought of his world. Most likely, a simple “Oy!” would have summed it up for her. And then she would have gone back to seasoning the big pot of golubtsy simmering on the stove.

That, my friends, is reality.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/15/24