Let’s hear from Moscow

Tesla chief Elon Musk has expressed displeasure at the public glare he constantly finds himself in. “The amount of attention I’ve got to be a supernova, which is super sucks,” he said on Twitter. “Will try my best to focus on doing. Useful things for civilization.” For someone given to talk about the existence of the human species, to find his personal life in the news as it has been. One option may be to refocus on climate change, which he called in 2018 as the “greatest threat” facing humanity this century. Global media coverage has not been kind to Musk lately, with $4.9 billion in government support received by Tesla, with Solar City and SpaceX often cited in climate terms since 2010. Still, given the reduction in cost SpaceX has achieved in carrying payloads into space, whatever solar geoengineering it does to shade our planet from the Sun will generate great interest. Could the spraying of reflective aerosols as a heat shield, perhaps combined with mirrors placed in orbit for remote calibration, help cool the Earth? If it’s technically feasible, would it be too expensive? Let’s hear from Musk.