Did a 1953 book by Werner Von Braun, one of the fathers of NASA, predict Musk’s role in space exploration?
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May
6, 2021
4 min read
Do you believe in destiny ? Certainly sometimes it seems that there are things predestined.
Elon Musk , the CEO and co-founder of private space exploration company SpaceX , announced in October last year that his company hopes to send a manned spacecraft to Mars in 2024.
The Red Planet has been a part of Musk’s dreams for a long time, saying that the only salvation for life on Earth lies in achieving space colonization and he has even said that he wants to be buried in our planetary neighbor.
It seems strange, but Musk’s fate seems to be written in that sense. At the end of 2020, the serial entrepreneur published a tweet in which he was talking about destiny. “Destiny, destiny. There is no escape for me, ”says the message in English.
What’s interesting is the response Twitter user Toby Li gave him:
Speaking about destiny, did you know that Von Braun’s 1953 book “Mars Project,” referenced a person named Elon that would bring humans to Mars? Pretty nuts pic.twitter.com/m28yFU4Ip6
– Toby Li (@tobyliiiiiiiiii) December 30, 2020
“Speaking of fate, did you know that Von Braun’s 1953 book ‘Mars Project’ made reference to a person named ‘Elon’ who would bring humans to Mars? How crazy.”
As reported by Gizmodo , Toby Li was talking about the book “Mars Project: A Technical Tale” ( Das Marsprojekt) by German-American rocket physicist, astronautical engineer and space architect Wernher Von Braun . The scientist was one of the main developers of Nazi Germany’s V-2 rocket at the end of World War II (although his level of affiliation with the Adolf Hitler regime is still disputed). At the end of the war, Von Braun emigrated to the United States where he helped push the creation of the country’s space exploration agenda and eventually, NASA.
In his science fiction book, Von Braun of what a trip to Mars in the middle of the Cold War supposedly would have been like, from planning to returning to Earth, based on the designs he made for his rockets and that in real life They served to shape the Apollo project that would eventually land man on the Moon.
Von Braun envisioned that the human colonists on Mars would be led by a person designated as “Elon.” However, just as Li mentioned, the word is not the name of the leader of the Martian community, but a title. Something like interim president: The “Elon” from Mars.
Yeah it’s real. This is the English transcript of the same book … But “Elon” referred by Von Braun in the book isn’t the name of the person but rather the name of the position something like an elected meritocratic president pic.twitter.com/ GADiMJHxLp
– Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) December 30, 2020
The anecdote has no more relevance than the curiosity of the coincidence between Von Braun’s novel and the founder of SpaceX, but it is certainly interesting to imagine that some people are born with a written destiny. Especially if we consider that Musk recently called himself the emperor of Mars .
If you are interested in reading the book, you can find it on Amazon .