Bill Maher and Neil Degrasse Tyson found common ground on Friday as they both ruthlessly mocked Elon Musk’s promises to send people to Mars.
Maher and Tyson had some heated disagreements on HBO’s Real Time, but neither were convinced of Musk’s promise to colonize Mars having any merit. Democratic strategist and former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile also joined in on the Musk mockery.
During his Overtime segment, Maher asked how long it would take for Musk to “realistically send humans to Mars.” Tyson was quick to jump on the topic, saying he has “strong views” on it. Maher applauded them finding a topic they were in total agreement on.
“How badly would we have to rat fuck Earth before it’s worse than a place that’s 200 below zero with no air and no water with six months to reach it?!” Maher said as Tyson yelled, “Preach it! Preach it”
Check out the exchange below:
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: “I have strong views on that. My read of the history of space exploration is such that we do big, expensive things only when it’s geopolitically expedient, such as we feel threatened by an enemy. And so for him to just say, let’s go to Mars because it’s the next thing to do. What is that venture capitalist meeting look like? ‘So, ELon, what do you want to do?’ ‘I want to go to Mars?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘$1 trillion.’ ‘Is it safe?’ ‘No. People will probably die.’ ‘What’s the return on the investment?’ ‘Nothing.’ That’s a five minute meeting. And it doesn’t happen.”
BILL MAHER: “We agree. I’m not for going to Mars.”
TYSON: “What I’m saying is, here’s how we get to Mars, ready? China leaks a memo, doesn’t even have to be true, they leaked a memo that they want to put military bases on Mars, right? Then we’re on Mars in 10 months when NASA doesn’t have a spacecraft, but Elon does! ‘Here’s my spacecraft to Mars.’ And we end up paying him to use his spaceship to get to Mars. And that’d be easy for China because Mars is already red so that’d be an easy sell. So I don’t see it happening until governments judge that it’s geopolitically in our interest. Otherwise, I don’t see as just exploration.”
DONNA BRAZILE: “But I believe President elect Trump has some interests in Mars. So we might you might have another conversation in a couple of months.”
TYSON: “At some point somebody has to pay for it and just being interested in something is not the same thing as paying for it.”
BRAZILE: “He believes there are people there. I mean, he was I listen to that podcast with Joe Rogan. It took four hours and two bottles of wine.”
TYSON: “Why do his comments who is alive on Mars matter to you at all?”
MAHER: “It could happen.”
BRAZILE: “I thought maybe that he might escape there for the holidays. You know, you got me stuck on the damn holidays now.”
MAHER: “The point is you can’t live on Mars. I’ve said this so many times. How badly would we have to rat fuck Earth before it’s worse than a place that’s 200 below zero with no air and no water with six months to reach it?!”
TYSON: “Preach it! Preach it!”
Watch above via HBO.
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