Who oesn’t love a weird, 60-plus-year-old coincidence? As if there aren’t enough headlines about Elon Musk at the moment, a connection between his name and a decades-old book that seemed to eerily predict the billionaire’s involvement in Mars exploration resurfaced this week.
In the 1950s, German-turned-American scientist Wernher von Braun (yes, the Nazis’ leading rocket man), wrote a science fiction novel called The Mars Project. It takes place in then-distant 1980 and features human colonists on Mars whose leader uses the title “Elon.” As in, oh, we don’t know … billionaire Tesla and SpaceX big shot, upcoming SNL host, and guy who wants us to get us to Mars? The coincidence is hardly unknown. My CNET colleague Eric Mack wrote about it in 2018. It gained more notoriety when space reporter Toby Li tweeted about it in December 2020, writing, “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.”Musk himself responded to the tweet suspiciously, tweeting back, “Are we sure this is real?”And real it is, although as one Twitter user pointed out, “‘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.” https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=gaelFC&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-2&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1344213705781723136&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnet.com%2Fnews%2Felon-musks-first-name-shows-up-in-1953-book-about-colonizing-mars%2F&sessionId=7e767f4fc606c5f53bef9d66367e5d92f051bd20&siteScreenName=CNET&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px