Bill Maher To Put Elon Musk In The Hot Seat Over SpaceX Mars Mission

Billionaire Elon Musk is set to be the next guest on Bill Maher‘s political talk show “Real Time With Bill Maher” and the two will possibly discuss Musk’s vision to transport people to Mars, among other things.

What Happened: Ahead of the interview which will be aired on Friday at 10 p.m. EDT, Maher said he is excited to have a conversation with the SpaceX and Tesla CEO.

“I am very excited and I want to talk to him. I have never been on the same page on why we should go to Mars,” Maher said, hinting at the line of questions lined up for the upcoming interview.

“However bad we ruin Earth it cannot be worse than a place that has no air, is 200 degrees below zero and a long way away, and has six-month of dust storms and you have to live underground and there’s radiation,” Maher told his guest panel comprising Esther Perel, Glenn Loury and Daniel Bessner. 

Maher was responding to Bessner’s remark on failing to understand the reasons for going to space. “This generation of oligarchs just wants to escape earth or live forever,” Bressner remarked.

On his own opinions about Musk, Maher said, “I’m a Musk fan generally although he sometimes makes it hard.” 

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Why It Matters: Musk has time and again reiterated his dreams of making life “multi-planetary“. In 2020, he said that he would send a million people to Mars by 2050 aboard SpaceX-manufactured Starship. He nicknamed the rocket “modern Noah's Ark“.

Starship, part of Musk’s project to carry crew and cargo to “Mars and beyond”, had its first flight test on Thursday. Though the rocket exploded less than four minutes after take-off, SpaceX and Elon Musk termed it a success.

Musk has won both praise and flak for his Mars mission. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, for one, had previously said that he would not take a trip to Mars and would rather spend his money on vaccines.

Last week, Musk appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. Talking about his fascination with extraterrestrial existence, he said, “If anyone would know about aliens on Earth, it would be me. I am very familiar with space stuff. I’ve seen no evidence of aliens.”

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