At a time when literally every public event is being cancelled and the entire world is shutting down to stop the spread of the rampant Coronavirus, the idea of leaving this planet and living on Mars has actually started to sound not too bad.
Elon Musk, who is the current leading advocate for the eventual human colonization on Mars has been going at it for ages to really entrench the idea into the minds of the general population.
I mean, if you’re going to quarantine yourself in these dire times, doing it on Mars would be pretty cool (only if the colony has internet though, of course). So, Elon Musk’s space exploration company, SpaceX, which has been making leaps and bounds towards its eventual goal of reaching mars in the next few years, has dropped its new line of merchandise with the slogan ‘Occupy Mars‘.
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Also read: SpaceX overcomes L.A. Starship hurdle in its quest towards Mars colonization
SpaceX has been pushing towards the goal of ‘occupying Mars’ at the rate of knots with their latest Starship being at the forefront of the project. The company also recently completed the milestone of successfully landing 50 rockets back on Earth after deployment.
The ‘Occupy Mars’ line of clothing, which mostly includes T-shirts has a picture of Mars next to the slogan.
However, when Elon Musk posted the Occupy Mars logo on Twitter, Neil deGrasse Tyson with his ever vigilant gaze found that the photo of ‘Mars’ on the logo was actually not Mars at all. Instead, it was actually a picture of the Moon during a lunar eclipse that gave it an orange/brown hue.
So, Neil deGrasse Tyson naturally did not forego the chance to one up his old Twitter rival once again and pounced at the opportunity. In his rather sassy reply, he commented on Elon’s knowledge about the photo on the logo and then went on to elevate himself above his SpaceX friend by saying that his shirt actually had a photo of Mars on it.
Elon, Can I assume you know that the Mars in your "Occupy Mars” Tweet is actually an image of the Full Moon during a lunar eclipse, but the image on my shirt is Mars for real. -Neil pic.twitter.com/J8jq0o2nSN
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 11, 2020
However, these Twitter feuds are never that simple and Elon Musk came back at Neil deGrasse Tyson by stating that he actually knew about the discrepancy all along and that it was actually a dig against the billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Why? Well, because the Amazon founder had taken a swoop at Elon Musk earlier by saying that his methods were wrong and the actual fastest way to get to Mars was to colonize Moon first. So, this was a response by Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos that he is ready to colonize Moon as well to get to Mars.
After a couple of back and forth tweets, Neil deGrasse Tyson finally ended up admitting that Moon colonies would not be a bad idea either. A moon restaurant without any atmosphere could get kinda boring though.
I'm good with Moon colonies too. Hotels. Resorts. Interesting food. But a serious drawback for me is that the Restaurants will have no atmosphere.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 11, 2020
This is not the first time these two have had a clash on Twitter. It seems like they’re always going at each other in some capacity. For instance, earlier when Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cybertruck and posted a video of it battling against the Ford F150, Neil deGrasse Tyson swooped in on that conversation as well (check out the original story here).
It just seems like literally everyone has locked themselves in their homes to combat the coronavirus as they just have too much time on their hands for these Twitter squabbles. We’re not complaining though; we need some entertainment too.
In all seriousness though, the SpaceX Mars mission is actually making some very good progress and we’re finally approaching a stage where the reality of reaching the red planet actually seems not too far away.
The Mars mission is not the only thing that SpaceX is doing right now though. While the eventual colonization of Mars is important, there’s still a lot to do on Earth as well. So, with its Starlink Mission, SpaceX has taken the initiative to provide cheap and reliable satellite internet to the entire world.
So far, the company has managed to launch hundreds of satellites into the orbit and the mission shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
