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Full Version: Werner von Braun's 1949 Sci-Fi Time Anomaly
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Written in German by Werner von Braun in 1949, Project Mars was a science fiction novel depicting a Mars expedition (set in the 1960's!) and the eventual establishment a self-sustaining human settlement on Mars. (It's pretty bad, which explains why it's been forgotten and why von Braun kept his day job as a rocket scientist and didn't become a science fiction writer.)

What justifies it going in Scivillage's 'weird' forum? Well, the fact that the leader of von Braun's imaginary Mars colony was called... Elon! It's true!

Von Braun's Mars spaceships look to be the same size and roughly the same design as Elon's Starships.

Here's an English language pdf e-book version:

https://www.wlym.com/archive/oakland/doc...roject.pdf

Note page 177 where the Martian government is being described:

"The martian government was directed by ten men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and entitled "Elon". Two houses of Parliament enacted the laws to be administered by the Elon and his cabinet."

I think this is weirder than a loudly slamming fire-cabinet door.

Von Braun's 1949 version:

[Image: Wernher_von_Braun_Project_-Mars.jpg]

Elon's 2019 version:

[Image: Dnpe1cRUYAAbI0n.jpg]
Young Elon probably read the book, and his own name capturing his imagination, he internalized it.
(Aug 1, 2019 10:57 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Written in German by Werner von Braun in 1949, Project Mars was a science fiction novel depicting a Mars expedition (set in the 1960's!) and the eventual establishment a self-sustaining human settlement on Mars. (It's pretty bad, which explains why it's been forgotten and why von Braun kept his day job as a rocket scientist and didn't become a science fiction writer.)


A non-fictional appendix taken from the novel was published separately at least a couple of times before Elon's birth, as The Mars Project. It's apparently at the bottom of that PDF version of the novel, too. But unlikely that it carries a reference to the fictional leader in the novel above. So any conclusion that Elon's parents could not have been influenced by that in the course of naming him, is still safe.

The novel itself wasn't published until 2006, by Apogee Books in Canada, where Elon also has citizenship and first migrated to from SA prior to the US. One conspiracy theory does propose that the name of the leader in the original manuscript may have been deliberately changed to "Elon" in the course of the translation from German to English. But the translation for the entire work (both appendix and novel), by Henry J. White, happened before 1953 when the former was first published, not during the period between 2002 and 2006, when SpaceX had come into existence.
(Aug 2, 2019 01:25 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]A non-fictional appendix taken from the novel was published separately at least a couple of times before Elon's birth, as The Mars Project. It's apparently at the bottom of that PDF version of the novel, too. But unlikely that it carries a reference to the fictional leader in the novel above. So any conclusion that Elon's parents could not have been influenced by that in the course of naming him, is still safe.

The novel itself wasn't published until 2006, by Apogee Books in Canada, where Elon also has citizenship and first migrated to from SA prior to the US. One conspiracy theory does propose that the name of the leader in the original manuscript may have been deliberately changed to "Elon" in the course of the translation from German to English. But the translation for the entire work (both appendix and novel), by Henry J. White, happened before 1953 when the former was first published, not during the period between 2002 and 2006, when SpaceX had come into existence.

I think you might be onto something. I haven’t read it but I searched inside the book that was published in English in 1953 and there is no "Elon" showing up. Maybe it was added in 2006. Strange.

https://books.google.com/books/about/The...NImj-DxIYC
Collection of literary coincidences:

https://enigmose.com/coincidence_collection.html