What are the chances that anyone will write a book about colonizing Mars through the figure of a man named Elon more than 50 years ago? Universe Today said Wernher von Braun, an aerospace engineer, published the most compelling tale of planning human missions to Mars in 1948. Elon Musk isn't a natural-born billionaire.
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses on the red carpet of the Axel Springer Award 2020 on December 01, 2020 in Berlin, Germany.
The German scientist, who became an American citizen in 1955 and joined NASA, is regarded as one of the most influential rocket designers of the twentieth century and the head of construction for the legendary V-2 and Saturn V spacecrafts, which launched man to the Moon. Many existing designs for systems capable of being launched into space are based on their work.
Project Mars: Here's What This German Scientist Did
The German scientist had another mission between his brows while working on the Apollo program. Wernher still said he knew the space race would fade into the background once man set foot on the moon. But, being the genius that he was, he had already devised a strategy to reach Mars.
Project Mars: A Technical Tale was born from that vision. A science fiction account of a crewed mission to Mars based on diagrams and engineering equations that he included as an appendix to the book.
The novel was not initially written, but the appendix served as the basis for a lecture given by von Braun at the Hayden Planetarium in New York during the first symposium on sustained spaceflight (1951). The appendix was published in a special edition of the German spaceflight journal Weltraumfahrt shortly after. The book was published in Germany as Das Marsprojekt late 1951, and in the United States in 1953.
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Here's What This German Scientist Said
The following words is taken from the book's following passage, which circulated on Twitter and Reddit.
"Once installed, a Martian government was created led by ten men, whose leader was elected by universal suffrage for five years under the name or title of Elon. Two houses in Parliament enacted the laws that would be administered by both the Elon and his cabinet," von Braun wrote in the book as shared in wlym.com.
"The upper house was referred to as the Council of the Elders and merely named about 60 people, each of whom was named for life by the Elon as vacancies in the event of death," the German scientist added.
As a result, Wernher von Braun envisioned a future in which we will colonize Mars under the leadership of Elon, a title or name given to the individual in charge of the planet's governance. Of course, this is a huge coincidence given Elon Musk's personality.
What's the deal with Elon? In Hebrew, the name means "roble." In the Old Testament, it was also the name of one of the Israelite judges. Unless Musk's mother has some connections to the engineer that we don't know about, Project Mars is one of those rare and exciting coincidences. And who knows, it could turn out to be a great prophecy.
Here's What Elon Musk Said About The Prophecy
According to Entrepreneur.com, Musk's aspirations were apparently predicted by someone in the 1950s, which seems odd. "Destiny, destiny. There is no escape for me," Elon Musk tweeted last year. What's interesting is the response he received from Twitter user Toby Li.
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 pic.twitter.com/m28yFU4Ip6
— Toby Li (@tobyliiiiiiiiii) December 30, 2020
Musk asked Li if this was true. Pranay Pathole, another Twitter user, replied on the Twitter thread and said the book real. He explained that the name "Elon" that Von Braun mentioned in the book isn't the name of an individual, but rather the title of a position, such as an elected meritocratic president.
As a result, the connection between Von Braun's novel and the creator of SpaceX is most likely coincidental. Still, it's intriguing to think that some people are born with a predetermined destiny, particularly given Musk's recent claim to be the Emperor of Mars.
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