Musk sees aliens, tunnels in candlelit vision of the future
SITTING in the dark, wearing a traditional Indonesian batik shirt and surrounded by candles, Elon Musk offered a vision for the future that includes aliens, deep tunnels and rocket tourism.
The seemingly disembodied billionaire Twitter owner appeared by video link yesterday to address business leaders in Bali on the sidelines of the G20 summit, only his face and hands visible on an otherwise black screen.
“We had a power outage minutes before this call. That’s why I’m in the dark,” he told Indonesian tycoon -cum-moderator Anindya Bakrie.
Musk was asked why he had not travelled to the tropical Indonesian island and the new Twitter boss joked that his “workload has recently increased quite a lot” after his takeover of the social media giant.
He had little else to say about his controversial acquisition, which has included firing thousands of employees and introducing a fee for verification.
The conversation turned instead to tunnels deep underground to battle congestion, rocket travel across the world in less than an hour and discovering extra-terrestrial life in space.
“Maybe we will find alien civilisations or discover civilisations that existed millions of years ago,” he said. Aside from his “bullish” view on Indonesia’s future as a developing nation, the conversation largely stayed on his quirky and bold outlook for the future of Earth.
Jakarta has invited Musk to use Indonesia as a launch site for his Spacex rocket, pointing out the benefits of a location near the equator.
But Musk said he wants to see rocket platforms across the world that would allow people to travel “to the other side of the world” at 20 times the speed of sound.