Musk, Mars, and Obsessions
Jerry Rice, the legendary NFL receiver, would run a brutal 2.5 mile hill in the brutal California heat, day after day, well into his 40s. When asked why he maintained such a difficult routine after already becoming the greatest of all time, he would simply say he was afraid someone might outwork him. This same level of relentless dedication and almost irrational persistence finds a modern parallel in Elon Musk’s unwavering pursuit of Mars colonisation.
For Musk, Mars isn’t just another business venture, it’s an obsession that borders on missionary passion. Since founding SpaceX in 2002, he has maintained that making humanity a multi-planetary species is not just desirable but essential for our survival. Despite setbacks that would have deterred most entrepreneurs, Musk’s commitment to this goal has only intensified over time.
History offers us fascinating stories for this kind of technological obsession. Howard Hughes, an aviation pioneer from the mid 20th century, shared Musk’s combination of entrepreneurial success and technical fixation. Like Musk’s hands-on involvement in rocket design, Hughes would spend days obsessing over minute details of aircraft construction, once spending seven years and millions of his own fortune perfecting a single airplane design called the H-4 Hercules. His willingness to stake both his reputation and vast personal wealth on pushing the boundaries of flight technology is strangely similar to Musk’s all-in commitment to Mars colonisation.
The early years of SpaceX were marked by failure after spectacular failure. The first three launches of the Falcon 1 rocket ended in explosions, nearly bankrupting the company. With resources for only one more attempt, the fourth launch succeeded in September 2008, making SpaceX the first private company to reach orbit with a liquid-fuel rocket. This pattern of persistence through failure would become characteristic of Musk’s approach to space exploration.
Development of reusable rockets, a crucial step toward making Mars missions economically viable, faced similar challenges. Early attempts to land Falcon 9 boosters resulted in an explosion that Musk himself compiled into a self deprecating blooper video titled “How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket.” Yet each failure provided valuable data, and eventually, SpaceX achieved what many had deemed impossible: routine landings of orbital-class rockets.
This relentless pursuit of rationally impossible goals finds another parallel in filmmaker James Cameron. Just as Musk dreams of Mars colonies, Cameron has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in both filmmaking and exploration. His obsession with deep-sea exploration led him to become one of only three people to reach the Challenger Deep, the ocean’s deepest point. Like Musk, Cameron combines technological innovation with grand ambition, whether developing new camera systems for “Avatar” or building a specialized submersible for his deep-sea dive. Both men share an almost compulsive need to push beyond established limits, even when conventional wisdom suggests they’re pursuing impossible dreams.
The Starship program, specifically designed for Mars missions, has followed a similar trajectory of ambitious innovation. Multiple prototypes have exploded during testing, with each failure scrutinised by critics as evidence of the project’s impossibility. Yet Musk’s response has remained consistent: analyse, iterate, improve. The project continues to advance, with each test providing valuable data for the next attempt.
This single-minded focus finds parallels in other legendary figures of human achievement. Michael Phelps maintained his punishing training schedule 365 days a year, accumulating over 30,000 hours of practice by age 23, matching Musk’s notorious 100+ hour workweeks and nights spent sleeping on the SpaceX factory floor.
What sets Musk apart is not just his tolerance for failure but his ability to maintain focus on the end goal while dealing with immediate setbacks. When asked about the numerous explosions and failures, he often quotes Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This perspective transforms what others might see as catastrophic failures into necessary steps toward success.
Research in cognitive psychology and behavioural science increasingly supports the value of this persistent approach to failure. One such study introduces a different kind of failure called “productive failure”, the phenomenon where individuals who face repeated setbacks often develop more innovative and robust solutions than those who succeed early. The study found that groups who experienced early failures in complex problem solving tasks ultimately outperformed groups who had initial success, developing more creative and comprehensive solutions.
This mirrors the trajectory of both elite athletes and technological pioneers like Musk. If you look closely, most Olympic athletes or rather gold medalists had experienced significant career setbacks or failures that they credited as crucial to their eventual success. For example, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt have had disastrous Olympic events before they came into light. These athletes, like Musk, didn’t just persevere through failure, they actively learned from it.
A fascinating study from the Harvard Business School examined what they termed “intelligent failure” in innovative companies. The research found that organisations that maintained systematic approaches to learning from failures were three times more likely to achieve breakthrough innovations than those that avoided or minimised failure. SpaceX’s rapid prototyping and testing approach, which embraces failure as a learning tool, exemplifies this methodology.
The psychological concept of “growth mindset” developed by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, further indicates this phenomenon. Dweck’s research shows that individuals who view challenges and failures as opportunities for learning consistently outperform those who view ability as fixed. This mindset is evident in both elite athletes like Jerry Rice, who continued to refine his skills well past his peak, and in Musk’s approach to rocket development, where each explosion is viewed as a data point rather than a defeat.
Like Jerry Rice running that punishing hill into his 40s, Musk’s persistence seems to be fuelled not by the probability of success but by the magnitude of the goal itself. The colonisation of Mars represents humanity’s first step into becoming a multi-planetary species. A goal that Musk believes is worth pursuing regardless of the setbacks and criticisms encountered along the way.
Whether SpaceX will achieve its Mars ambitions within Musk’s lifetime remains to be seen. However, the company’s progress thus far, from near-bankruptcy to accelerating the space industry suggests that dismissing these goals as mere fantasy would be unwise. In the end, Musk’s obsession with Mars might prove to be exactly what humanity needed: someone willing to pursue an almost impossible goal with the kind of relentless dedication that turns science fiction into reality.
