Elon Musk: Famous or Infamous

Musk: We might be living in a simulation

In early 2015, Musk appeared on The Simpsons in an episode titled "The Musk Who Fell to Earth." The episode was a spoof on The Man Who Fell to Earth, the 1976 science fiction film starring David Bowie.

In the movie, which is based on the novel by Walter Tevis, an extra-terrestrial lands on earth and uses his advanced technological knowledge to build an enormous industrial conglomerate. With the fortune the conglomerate generates, he then creates his own space program to return to his dying home planet with the intention of saving it. In it, the main character’s lack of self-control, along with hostility from the American government, derail his plans and leave him stranded on earth.

Many sites on the Internet have taken Musk’s technological foresight, his incredible fortune and his interest in space exploration to suggest that he may, in fact, have come from outer space.

Musk Wants Aliens

But given Musk’s interest in space exploration, he has his own thoughts on extra-terrestrial life.

"Hopefully we do detect other life, and hopefully it isn't a warship coming toward us," he joked.

Elon Musk has even taken on the lack of evidence for extra-terrestrial life to consider even more disturbing possibilities in his public statements.

“The absence of any noticeable life may be an argument in favor of us being in a simulation,” Musk said in an interview with Aeon Magazine. “Like when you’re playing an adventure game, and you can see the stars in the background, but you can’t ever get there. If it’s not a simulation, then maybe we’re in a lab and there’s some advanced alien civilization that’s just watching how we develop, out of curiosity, like mold in a petri dish.”

“If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilizations, and I mean strange in a bad way,” he said in the same interview. “And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilizations.”

Back on earth, Musk has encountered some resistance as he tries to push his space exploration project further. Residents of Boca Chica Village, Texas, have called for the eviction of SpaceX from their county. They complain that the company will force them to wear badges and pass through checkpoints on launch days, which are scheduled about once a month when the facility is operating.

In December of 2017, Musk generated rumors when he suggested via tweet that the first passenger on SpaceX’s new Falcon Heavy rocket would be a Tesla Roadster. He explained on Instagram that “test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring…we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel. The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.”