The dinner guest who polled the table on Mars, three years before anyone believed it
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
At the 2004 PC Forum dinner, Ressi — who did not know Neal Stephenson but recognized him — came to the table and would not stop talking about buying a rocket from the Russians with his college roommate, who turned out to be Elon Musk; then he went around the table making everyone state how important it was that humans travel to Mars. The public record corroborates the background at web grade: Ressi was Musk's roommate at Penn, the two traveled to Moscow in 2001–2002 with Jim Cantrell to buy refurbished ICBMs for the Mars Oasis project, and the Russians' pricing sent Musk home to found SpaceX instead (S-120). In March 2004 — four years before Falcon 1 reached orbit — this was, as the record puts it, the eccentric rambling of a persistent dinner guest. The record's own genealogical instinct notes the pattern: the ideas that sound maddest at dinner are the ones worth writing down.
The relationship outlived the dinner: in January 2009 Jonathan Hare introduced Ressi to Narry Singh at CES — 'you guys are both super-cool, and should know each other' — with the era's texture preserved: Ressi's frequently-changing addresses, and the Dyson network as everyone's fallback directory (S-124). The same month, Hare's X-Prize thread cites him as the proof the early x-prize crowd was more fun than the NASA/Boeing folks (S-122).
There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.
Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-120The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-121The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-122The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-124The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.
Public contributions earn Publicity Premium; bringing others who were there earns Cascade Premium. Everything is valued retrospectively as outcomes verify, so nothing has to be priced up front.
Correct this entry → Add a story, photo or link → Browse the graph →