“super-wealthy” or just “rich”? You have mentioned both.
Leaving Earth will never be cheap, but if Musk is successful then an upper-middle class American (rich by world standards) can afford the trip.
Billionaires wouldn’t want to make the trip anyway. It’s too risky and their standard of living would drop too much. Mars is for extreme risk-takers. If and when Mars becomes moderately self-sustaining, then the super-wealthy might consider moving. Until then they’d be far more comfortable holed up in some remote location on (or below) Earth.
If Musk fails and it continues to cost billions to visit Mars, then it will never be anything but a tiny research outpost.
It’s not worth splitting hairs over. Simply put, he’s not headed in any direction that deserves praise or admiration or anyone’s support. He’s a predator and the vast majority of us are just his marks.
I’m going to suggest a left field candidate in Linus Torvalds. He started the kernel to an operating system that is running on billions of devices around the planet. He would be the first to admit that thousands of other people have contributed to its development, but for almost 30 years he has been the benevolent dictator at the helm.
His work has enabled many other people to do so much. Without him we might still have those things, but they would look much different. Could Google have grown to where it is if they’d had Microsoft as a gatekeeper?
There were many factors that lead to Linux being as important as it is today. If Linux had never existed, would some other open source project have been able to fill that role? Quite possibly, but it’s also important to remember all of the factors that let Linux become so dominant over BSD, Minix, and others in the 90s.
Like this Forbes article suggests maybe we don’t need Neil Armstrong and the Beatles to make our mark in the world, and my somewhat sarcastic remarks upthread are a testament to that.
Page and Brin and Torvald are good suggestions. Software development might not be glam, but it is influential.
I’d also go for Justin Trudeaux and Leonardo DiCaprio. Trudeax for obvious reasons, and DiCaprio because he uses his fame to campaign for environmental issues to an unusual degree and has done every since he first got big. It’s handy having someone cool and kinda one of the boys who is passionate about that subject.
Justin, yes (but you were right about the spelling of the surname). Prime Minister of a G8 country is fairly important. You don’t usually get into that position at his age, and he’s been doing it for a while. Canada is a fairly important country.
meh - fancy socks and a so-so management of a G8 country hardly make a person an influential Gen-Xer. He hasn’t fundamentally changed anything in Canada or the world.
