Living on Mars is an eye-popping idea but it just ain’t going to take off, Elon Musk
WHEN Elon Musk announced recently that thanks to his space endeavours, more than a million people will be living on Mars in just 25 years’ time, I thought “come off it, mate”.
The trouble is that Musk does have a habit of making good on his promises.
I mean, last month, in a single week, he teased a new phone to rival Apple’s, he unveiled a robot that can actually fetch your slippers, and he introduced a self-driving taxi.
He literally rewrites the concept of being an over-achiever.
Of course, it would be easy to assume that he’s simply the frontman for all these things, a mouthpiece.
But it has transpired that he was actually the guy who came up with the idea of catching that massive rocket in the gantry rather than fitting it with heavy and complicated legs.
Which means he was at the coalface during the design process.
How? Because we see him every day, appearing on podcasts, and giving speeches, and supporting Trump, and backing my Hawkstone beer, and running both X and Tesla.
It’s almost like there must be three of him.
But even if there were two hundred of him, the idea of putting a million people on Mars by the equivalent of next Tuesday does seem a bit ridiculous.
Has he not seen Arnie in Total Recall?
You fall through a window and immediately, your skin starts to melt and your eyes become the size of footballs.
Things aren’t much better in reality. The radiation level is 50 times higher than it is on Earth.
This would make breeding fairly complex as your penis would fall off long before your baby turned out to have three heads.
Then there’s the temperature.
Sure, there are days when it’s a pleasant 70 degrees Fahrenheit but mostly it hovers around the minus 200 mark.
And it can get pretty windy.
So windy in fact that the entire planet can be consumed by one giant dust storm.
Then there’s the problem with housing these million people.
That’s roughly the population of Birmingham.
So you’d need to build a city that size up there, while your old chap is rotting off and you can’t see what you’re doing because of the dust and you have frostbite.
And how do you get all the building materials up there in the first place.
Churches are heavy. So are libraries.
Food? Well Matt Damon has taught us it’s possible to grow potatoes but I’m not sure you could ever have beef up there.
Because you’d have to put a cow in a space ship, and a bull.
And expect them to learn how to use the anti-gravity lavatories.
But let’s say Elon overcomes all of these issues, and if recent history is anything to go by, he might.
Where exactly is he going to find a million volunteers?
Because what he’s basically saying is: Would you like to leave Earth and spend the rest of your life eating potatoes in the freezing cold while your genitals glow like you’re in a Ready Brek commercial.
That’d be like saying to people in St Tropez: “Would you like to leave here and see out your days in Siberia.”
The answer’s going to be no.
NICKED . . . CHEDDAR
THERE was a time when villains went after gold or jewellery or cash.
But last weekend, someone half-inched £300,000 worth of Cheddar cheese.
Cheese, for God’s sake.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I always assumed that when newsagents stopped selling Men Only and Penthouse from the top shelf, shoplifting would die out.
But it hasn’t.
They will now nick anything that isn’t nailed down.
And as a result, last year, the thievery cost retailers £1.8billion.
And the police can’t do anything about it because they’re all on a training course, learning why all old ladies are Nazis and why the Deputy Chief Constable of Derbyshire’s hair is so wonderful.
Have a guess how many beer glasses are stolen from my pub every week?
No, you’re quite wrong, I’m afraid. It’s 400.
This means that on every day we are open we are losing 80, along with all the light bulbs from the lavatories and even the urinal traps.
This week, someone stole £200 worth of cooking oil. It’s an epidemic and it’s everywhere.
People are even nicking poppy collection tins and dogs and, as I reported a couple of weeks ago, the doors from your car.
And it’s not going to stop because there is no chance they’ll be caught and even if, by some miracle they are, there will be no punishment.
Punishment would affect their mental health.
And anyway, according to Starmer, it is the right of those who don’t work to take whatever they need from those who do.
HIDDEN JOY OF AGEING
EARLIER this week, I noticed that Netflix had “recently added” Gangs Of London and having greatly enjoyed the first two series, I sat down for a damn good binge.
However, there was a scene in episode six where I thought: “I think I’ve seen this before.”
And indeed I had.
Because when Netflix said, “recently added”, what they meant was “recently bought from Sky where you watched it two years ago, you imbecile”.
This is one of the good things about growing old.
A terrible memory means I can watch all my favourite shows for the very first time.
And meet new friends who I’ve actually known since school.
And now I’m longing to go to Paris.
And go on a train. I’ve never been on one of those, you know.
SAFE PECKS
SO, Worcester City Council is planning to tackle the local seagull population explosion by putting the lady seagulls on the Pill.
Hmm. How will this work, I wonder?
How do you train a bird to take a pill every morning?
I’m a human and I can’t manage it. I’ve never once completed a course of malaria pills.
But I hope they work it out because I can then use the technique on the half a million magpies that have come to live at Diddly Squat Farm this year.
These are terrible creatures.
They fly like there’s something wrong with them, they nick stuff, they eat the eggs of ground-nesting birds and, worst of all, I’m having to spend about four hours every day saluting the bloody things.
WHY USE REAL NAME? FLUCKED IF I KNOW
EVERY single time you read or hear about Tommy Robinson, the reporter always tells you his real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Why?
When they mention Elton John, they don’t add “whose real name is Reg Dwight”.
And at the beginning of Blind Date, they never said: “Please welcome your host, Cilla Black . . . whose real name is Priscilla White.”
Also, they definitely never mentioned the fact that Diana Dors’s real name was Diana Fluck.