At the end of last year, the entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted, “Destiny, destiny. There is no escape for me.” 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,” Li wrote back.
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
In his science fiction book, Von Braun recounts what a trip to Mars in the midst of the Cold War would have been like. He imagined that the human colonists on Mars would be led by a person called “Elon”.
To be clear, “Elon” isn’t the character’s name but rather the title given to elected leaders of Mars. Still, the coincidence is pretty damn wild — especially if we consider that Musk recently called himself the emperor of 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
