Culture & Entertainment
Elon Musk focuses on colonizing Mars, dodges questions about Twitter deal
Less than 24 hours after announcing that he would walk away from his Twitter offer, Elon Musk took the stage to speak at the Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley Conference and focused on 'colonizing Mars'.
In a filing last week, the world's richest person and self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist announced that he would no longer pursue his offer to buy out Twitter and take it private. Musk, who has shared multiple ideas to improve the social media platform over the last few months, had said in May that the deal was on hold due to the high number of spam accounts.
Almost two months after the announcement, the two parties do not seem to have found a way out of the logjam, and Musk has decided to call off the deal, a filing said on Friday.
Musk's first public appearance after backing off
Less than 24 hours later, Musk was to speak at the Sun Valley Conference, and many attendees were keen to hear his views about the Twitter deal. Musk briefly touched upon the topic, especially the treatment the platform meted out to former President Donald Trump and how it shares its user data.
For the rest of the session, Musk spoke about humanity's future on Mars and his vision for the same, Bloomberg reported. SpaceX's investors were also present, and Musk was likely speaking to his audience when he spoke about his vision for Mars.
Musk's other company, Tesla's stock has fallen since he announced the Twitter offer, with investors fearing that Musk's time and attention would be divided post the acquisition. SpaceX, a privately held company, has seen its valuation soar in the recent round of funding, according to Bloomberg. It appears that Musk would like to focus his attention on his own companies now that his interest in Twitter has waned. SpaceX is nearing the date of its Starship rocket's first orbital test flight, which will play an important role in such missions.
A civil life insurance policy
Besides the financial gains that could be made by reaching the Red Planet, Musk also reiterated that the planet could be a necessary platform for human life. Musk highlighted plausible events like the Sun burning or a disaster hitting Earth, and called Mars a civil life insurance policy. Earlier this year, Musk tweeted that human landing was possible before the end of the decade.
As much as Musk would wish that the Twitter chapter was now behind him, Twitter has signaled that it will pursue the matter in the courts to push the deal through and has put together a legal team to sue Musk, Bloomberg said in another report.
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