Musk muses about Mars and Earth – but stays quiet on Twitter deal

theguardian.com:

Elon Musk reportedly talked about the colonization of Mars and boosting Earth’s birthrates during his keynote address at Allen & Co’s Sun Valley conference on Saturday, but he avoided discussing his attempt to withdraw from his $44bn bid to buy Twitter.

Musk’s talk to close out this year’s edition of the Idaho conference which annually draws tech, media and finance gurus became one of the hottest tickets after lawyers for the Tesla boss filed notice Friday that he was terminating his bid to acquire Twitter. The billionaire accused the social media firm of failing to provide information on bot accounts, among other things, making observers wonder whether he would address such complaints at his speech scheduled for the next day.

But Musk – who is also chief of the private rocket company SpaceX – declined to do so. Instead, he mused about how he viewed Mars as a “civilian life insurance” if a disaster ever wiped out Earth, Bloomberg reported, citing the recollections of multiple people at the closed-door speech.

The remarks on Mars echoed a tweet from him earlier this year that humans could land on the planet by 2029.

Reuters, who reported speaking with attendees as well, wrote that Musk also expressed concern over the decline of birthrates in wealthy countries. And, Bloomberg added, he also renewed complaints about how Twitter had banned Donald Trump after the former president’s supporters staged the deadly US Capitol attack in early January 2021.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Musk was aware that Trump had called him a “bullshit artist” on Saturday while stumping for Republican political candidates in Alaska.

Trump’s insult came after Musk last month said he was mulling throwing his support behind Florida’s governor, Ron