Even as he is building the infrastructure for multiplanitary life and aiming to accelerate the electric vehicle revolution (among his other ventures), billionaire tech titan Elon Musk showed he has a sense of humor. Sprinkled through a technical Reddit chat about SpaceX on Saturday, Musk made a handful of jokes indicating his playful side.
"We plan to use the Incendio spell from Harry Potter: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Fire-Making_Sp," Musk responds to a query from a Reddit user about the heat exchangers to be used on the Raptor engine, which he expects to use to get to Mars. In the Harry Potter series, Potter uses the Incendio spell to make fire. Musk then goes on to answer the redditor's comment seriously.
In another thread of the online chat, a redditor declares it is not possible to land on the moon with a particular sort of engine. Musk responds in the affirmative: "Yes, you can. - Bob, the Builder," referring to the beloved children's cartoon character.
When a Reddit user noticed the thrust force of the Musk's SpaceX Raptor engine was reduced by about a third and asked about the change, Musk writes, "We chickened out," before offering a more thorough explanation.
During the Saturday Reddit conversation, Musk also had a sense of humor about how important safety standards would be when using his Mars rocket technology for ultra-fast Earth flights (29 minutes from New York to London), which he touted at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) conference in Adelaide, Australia, in September.
"The advantage of getting somewhere in 30 mins by rocket instead of 15 hours by plane will be negatively affected if 'but also, you might die' is on the ticket," Musk says on Reddit.
Musk's playful tone did not go unnoticed by the community, who had tuned in for the discussion about SpaceX's most recently released plan for getting to and settling on Mars.
As one redditor summed it up: "Elon Musk making dad jokes on Reddit, what a time to be alive."
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