RUSH: Now, folks, I made mention last week of a story about Mars. And I have a couple of updates to it. The story last week on Mars was that a bunch of Millennial tech bloggers were livid at Bill Nye The Science Guy who, by the way, they consider to be a god. He’s second only to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the heir to Carl Sagan.
And Millennial people, young Millennials who think they, too, are scientists because they care about climate change and write about technology, they think they’re scientists. To them, Bill Nye — who is not a scientist, he’s a TV performer that wears a white lab coat. He’s not a scientist. Never has been. But he has a TV show called Bill Nye The Science Guy where he tells little 5- and 6-year-olds why water is wet and why it’s hot and why it’s cold and so forth, considered a great science show.
Bill Nye The Science Guy happened to tell a bunch of people that the idea of colonizing Mars is ridiculous and impossible. A, we can never get there. B, we couldn’t live if we did get there, because, A, there’s nothing to breathe there, there is no food there, and there’s no shelter there, it’s not possible.
Well, Elon Musk is out selling trips to Mars for $200,000; so these young Millennial scientists think the only way they can save themselves is to go to Mars because the earth is not gonna be around very much longer because of climate change. I’m not making this up. These kids really believe this!
So when Bill Nye came out and told them that colonizing Mars is impossible, they turned on him with a rage and hatred like you can’t believe, because they believe colonizing Mars or a passing asteroid may be the only chance they have to live beyond the age of 60.
It’s kind of a shame, really, when you get down to it. I mean, this many young skulls full of mush have really bought this. But it’s their problem; it’s not ours. Unless they make it ours, which they’re trying to do by changing every imaginable American policy they can.
Well, the update on this comes from NASA. It turns out that NASA does not want… (laughing) – you will not believe this. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is the agency that got us to the Moon in 10 years — do you realize we couldn’t get to the Moon in a hundred years if the order were given today because of all the bureaucracy and all the can’ts and all the risks. We would have never. The fact that we did this, looking back on it, is stunning compared to the roadblocks and obstacles in our way today. And this is an example. NASA doesn’t want to go to Mars even if we could!
A blogger from another tech blog found a story involving an official at NASA, happens to be the Library of Congress chairman in astrobiology. Her name is Lucianne Walkowicz. And she had a recent panel discussion at the Library of Congress on going to Mars and said NASA doesn’t want to go.
You know why? Because it would not be right. It would be colonizing Mars. It would be an extension of American colonialism to go to Mars. And we’re not gonna do it. America is so impure, America has such filth for fingerprints, America has been so mean to people around the world that we have colonized along with the Brits, that we are not gonna go to Mars and do the same thing.
She actually said, “I can’t give you an example of what a decolonized Mars looks like, but it starts by having multidisciplinary conversations about the things that happen here on Earth. I often give examples of Standing Rock as an Earth-based example of interests colliding, where you have indigenous people opposing a large-scale project that, much like space exploration, features cooperation between private industry and the government.”
So she was asked a question, “Well, what does decolonizing Mars mean to you?” The NASA official: I’m trying to think carefully about what our relationship to Mars should be and whether we can avoid reproducing deeply entrenched colonial behaviors as we seek to better understand our solar system. This includes thinking about why our language for developing understandings or environments that are new to us tends to be colonial as in colonizing Mars, as in exploring Mars, as in developing Mars.
Those are three dirty words. We colonized America. We developed America. We explored America. And we ruined it! We took it away from the Indians. We took it away from the Native Americans. We destroyed the American continent, in these people’s minds, and so we can’t do the same to Mars, so we’re not going. I’m not making this up. We can’t go to Mars even if we could because we’re such rotten people that we would colonize the place and take it away from the Martians, and we would steal the Martians’ resources from ’em and use them ourselves.
They’d only be left with some casinos. Do you believe this? If these people were in charge of NASA back in the 1960s, we would have never — the Moon would still be on the drawing board. I’ll tell you, these people, they’re hilarious, but they corrupt literally everything.
Now, Elon Musk — one more story — has found himself in a new controversy. And this is from, by the way, another tech blog. “As Mars colonization inches ever closer to becoming a reality –” (laughing) — “As Mars colonization inches ever closer to becoming a reality –” what happened to Bill Nye The Science Guy? I guess they forgot him. “– some have argued that the ability to afford a ticket to the Red Planet is a luxury afforded only to the wealthiest members of society.
“Billionaire Elon Musk has said it’ll run potential Mars inhabitants traveling with his company SpaceX hundreds of thousands of dollars to get there. But in a new interview, he rebuffed the assertion that a one-way ticket to Mars is an easy ticket out for the rich.”
In other words, the tech bloggers are upset because Musk’s trip to Mars will only be for the rich, that Mars is not being made affordable by Musk; so Musk is a fraud, Musk is a phony, and Musk is designing so only the rich can escape the hellhole of earth, only the rich will be able to colonize Mars, only the rich will be able to continue to live in luxury and comfort while the rest of humanity sweats a slow death amidst climate change on earth.
I am not exaggerating a syllable. This is what they think. This is a new controversy Elon Musk finds himself in. And he’s out there defending it. He’s saying you think living on Mars is gonna be luxury? Half the people on the trip are not gonna make it. I’m accounting for some people to die on the trip. If you go to Mars with me on my first trip, I guarantee you you’re not coming back to earth. We’re not gonna be able to get back. And I don’t know how soon people are gonna wake up and realize, once we get to Mars, it’s gonna be 24/7 work because there’s no life support systems there. He’s having to tell them all of this. You know, in a society where comic book heroes now populate the biggest grossing movies, you do have to wonder what perceptions of reality are among a subset of our youthful population.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, NASA just landed a spacecraft on Mars. Now, there are no people on this spacecraft so there’s no danger that we would colonize Mars and take it away from whoever the native Martians are. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty big achievement. We’ve landed yet another craft on Mars, and this is just gonna increase the anticipation of people being able to escape the horror show known as earth to get to the palatial and heavenly Mars to live out the rest of their lives and escape all the racism and bigotry and blah, blah, here.