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

This is unlikely. It's his life's mission.

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 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.

Human foot on Mars is a multi-year research project, but NASA is still at the stage of planning the moon base.

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.