Elon Musk is the man of the hour, once again. His knowledge, achievement, financial worth is greater than they were in the Great Dot Com era of the 1990’s. He was abused and ridiculed for years when he was ousted from the CEO position at X.com (later became PayPal) through extremely embarrassing way, but with his recent technological and business achievements in electric car as CEO of Tesla and spaceship as CEO of SpaceX, the public reveres him more than ever. I noticed that business and innovation lectures are beginning to use Tesla for successful case studies and the name Elon Musk appear more and more on the news. A few days ago, I begun to read his biography, and I felt so relieved, as dismay and anxiety filled my Internet space and general news media with doomsday political scene and point of no return evidence of broken earth ecology. The client I worked with closely over the years often pointed out of my negative attitudes. What I saw did not convince me that we are capable of correcting many of problems to create a happy world. It’s all in a timing. But the tide has finally turned inside of me, and I live and work towards my guiding light of hope.
This light of hope came to me as I read Musk’s biography written by Ashlee Vance. Musk wants to colonize Mars into a human habitat. Instantly, I thought of the thrill and the yearning I felt in the topics of space and energy when I took Introduction to Astronomy and Energy and Environment courses at the Penn State University. These where the most exciting courses for me. Like ocean voyagers exploring new territories in the medieval age, humans will now venture out of this earth. Mars and other parts of the extra-terrestrial space likely has forms of life not yet recognized by humans and their habitats may be ruined by the humans as they were ruined on the earth, but following the physical law, we go. And this gives me hope.
In the YouTube video of WGS 17 Session: A Converstation with Elon Musk, the moderator, H.E. Mohammad AlGergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs & The Future, UAE draws out from Musk a view that is something like: “We as humans are not here just to solve problems. We need hope.” Over the past year, I noticed myself being alternatively fearful, angry, sad, and helpless during the Brexit, the U.S. presidential election, behavior of Ministry of Fishery in Japan, and many other situation that people were finger pointing with self-righteousness. I wanted to do something to make positive impact, but no matter how hard I thought, I could not find a way to jump into the arena and become positively involved. Even in the space travel and energy creation fields, I do not have the kind of mind nor the education to do the hard science work, but although in very small way, I can put my money where my hope lies by either volunteering or donating. And to keep this light of hope burning, rather than dwelling on the negative, I will spend time learning about astronomy and space colonization.
FUJIKO SUDA 