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I would suspect that these gentlemen are more likely to end up sipping Mai Thais on the beach in the seedier parts of southeast Asia than end up on Mars haha.
Could you cobble up a few thousand disaffected but reasonably wealthy men if you tried hard enough? Eh, probably, but you'd have to be quite lax in terms of screening. I'm not sure Musk wants his colonies to have that particular make, but I suppose he's going to have to compromise somewhere.
My contention is that the number of people who are driven enough to want to settle Mars at a quality of life reasonable in the next few decades of colonial tech are very few, at least if they're paying for the privilege. Larger if you pay them, but then the question arises, what are you paying them for? They're unlikely to be financial positive, but of course, we must account for the fact that the biggest backer here is distinctly uninterested in an ROI (my Twitter has been bombarded with people arguing that point, but it seems clear to me money is far from Musk's primary motivator for Mars).
Maybe for the criminals, but I think the world will be shrinking in the future. Fewer places to hide and disappear.
Beyond a thousand participants its unlikely musk will be personally interviewing anyone for the project. To some extent I'm assuming organization success for him. That this project actually gets off the ground and there is a reproductive and successful group of humans on Mars. If it is successful at all, then at some point it will turn into something that not one single human can manage.
I like your contentions. But you are stopping at a few thousand. And I don't think the OP is stopping at a few thousand. Break ten thousand and I feel that things change significantly. Above ten thousand you go from some chance of managed by a single person to zero chance.
I do believe Musk in what he says he wants. Which is a multi planet species. And I think he is working as hard as he can to get there. I do think there is a limitation of wealth and resources at our current level. Right now he can support a few people on mars. In a decade when he makes things cheaper it might be up to 100 people. In two decades when he continues making things cheaper and maybe grows his wealth a bunch its 1000 people.
I don't think this project can solely rely on Musk to break 10k people on Mars. And when that limitation strikes, I think the groups I have outlined are the colonists available.
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