Opportunity Thy Name Is Starbase, Texas

 On March 2nd (yesterday as I write this), Elon Musk published a tweet announcing the creation of Starbase, Texas, a new city. This creates the perfect opportunity for Musk to resolve one of the main objections to his Tesla production goals - where does the electricity to charge all of those vehicles to come from? - by addressing the related question, where does the electricity for a Mars or Lunar colony come from?

It is a matter of black letter law here in Texas that a property of 100 acres or more, that is outside the boundaries of a municipality, can host a gun range whether or not the neighbors agree or a municipality later expands to include said property. Given that 100 acres can be near-as-dammit 1,100 feet wide by 4,000 feet long (yes, I realize an "acre" is a measure of area and thus has no fixed dimension), a 1 thousand yard long rifle range probably won't be more than 500 feet wide (and likely less), which leaves the several hundred feet of land on either side to host a vehicle driving track, about which more later. As a business, an outdoor shooting range can be marginally profitable on its own; as part of an outdoor recreation complex, such a business would likely succeed financially depending on how close it is to the outskirts of a municipality.

Where might Elon Musk put the electric generating plant(s) needed to power the city of Starbase, not to mention all those electric cars and trucks (and other vehicles) he is already building at Tesla? How about under ground, beneath the rifle range? There are various reactor designs from which to choose, especially if you don't want to develop weapons-grade plutonium as a "by product" of your power plant. While a Helium 3 (3He hereafter) fusion reactor seems the currently best option for use here on Earth, molten-salt type fission reactors are possibly a better option for off-planet applications (fusion converts water into energetic particles and thus needs to be regularly replaced; fission re-uses a super-heated liquid to create steam - also reused - to power electric generators, and radiation isn't as big an issue in space) while still providing the rigorous safety technology needed for operation here on Earth (or any other planetary body). How quickly could SpaceX get a Starship onto Luna, to deliver as semi-autonomous (Hello Starlink) as necessary surface mining equipment, with which to extract 3He from the lunar surface? A second Starship vehicle will almost certainly be required to efficiently shuttle 3He to Earth (and eventually Mars) for final processing as reactor fuel, of course. If the molten salt fission reactor works out instead, can 3He be used as fuel in one? If not, how does one go about buying up that much thorium (or whatever)?

Depending upon the reactor design chosen, it should be possible to build ten 100 megawatt power plants below ground under the rifle range/recreation center property suggested above. By distributing the electricity thus generated through a network of tunnels as deeply as necessary beneath the already established right-of-ways underneath existing state and/or federal highways, it becomes possible to add as much as one terawatt of new-generation electricity to the Texas electricity grid from this one property. Extending this model, it becomes possible to add and distribute as many terawatt increases to the US power grid as 100 acre plots of land can be purchased for the purpose. The announcement of Starbase city creates the ideal opportunity for Elon Musk to combine all of his corporate creations in more-or-less direct support of his plans for off-Terra development of human civilization, while fortifying existing human civilization here on Terra.

If Tesla were to buy the One Wheel company along with the Zero Motorcycles company and fold both into the Tesla sales network, these would provide additional products for Tesla to market here on Earth that would seem to also have application on Mars or Luna in either human operated or autonomous mode operations. In the meantime, having one or more tracks upon which to ride rented or privately owned examples of all Tesla products seems to offer a selection of potential businesses to explore, while training future Loonies and Marsmen* as well. By providing Tesla and SpaceX engineers a location(s) to test and develop power generation and transportation technologies, while simultaneously generating a new income stream for both companies, this proposal also potentially solves the needed energy additions and the distribution security concerns to the US (as well as Mexico and Canada if that should become US foreign policy) national power grids (there are three, East, Texas, and West), all from within the existing boundaries of the Texas power grid network.

If it needs to be said, I'd like to work at the rifle range, Elon.

* See Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein