Category: The More You Know…

For the purposes of this exercise, ignore:

• Elon’s tendency to exaggerate
• The idiocy of having daily launches, when the distance between Earth and Mars varies between 55 million kilometers (35 million miles) and 400 million kilometers (250 million miles)
• The resources required to bring 1 million people to Mars, and then keep them alive
• The fact that Elon’s too flabby to fit into the pictured spacesuit

…and once you’ve ignored those, what’s the fatal flaw in the AI slop picture above? Scroll down to see the answer.

Answer: The people outside the domes should be in environmental suits. Mars’ atmosphere is pretty much carbon dioxide.

My pick is number 2, as gravel is a key ingredient of concrete.

Many people use the terms cement and  concrete interchangeably, but that’s wrong. Cement is just one ingredient of concrete; it’s the “glue” that holds the aggregates — that’s a fancy term for “little bitty bits of hard stuff” — together. Those aggregates are typically sand and gravel.

Half of all gravel is used for concrete, and since 2006, humanity has been producing enough concrete to create a cube that’s 1.2 miles by 1.2 miles by 1.2 miles every year. Providing the gravel for even a small fraction of the annual concrete production at with a zero cost of goods sold would be pretty lucrative!

My backup pick would be number 3, because most locked doors and gates, as well as many walls and fences, would no longer be an obstacle.