X Offers Trip to Mars in March Madness Competition

So, this is something.

Today, X has announced a March Madness “Bracket Challenge”, in partnership with Uber Eats, with the grand prize for a perfect March Madness bracket being a trip to Mars onboard one of Elon’s yet-to-be-built rocket ships.

Yep, a trip to Mars. That’s definitely going to happen, definitely sometime in the next decade.

As per X:

“Basketball fans can now compete for a chance to win a trip to Mars – yes that’s right, a trip to Mars on SpaceX’s Starship vehicle for the perfect bracket, or a $100,000 cash prize if there is no perfect bracket.”

Mars. Yep.

I mean, I get why people are so high on Elon, based on the various projects that he’s been involved with that have defied expectation, or expanded what’s possible with certain technologies. But it still amazes me that people take everything he says 100% seriously, and trust that his grand visions are actually going to come to fruition.

Because most of his projects are based on his imagination, and building on top of conceptual ideas.

For example, Elon’s been promising full self-driving cars “next year” for a decade now, yet FSD doesn’t seem to be any closer than it was three or four years ago. But that hasn’t stopped Elon from building on that premise, because if FSD is actually rolled out, then Tesla can facilitate “robotaxis,” and deliver passive income for Tesla owners. That then extends to self-driving buses, revolutionizing transport as we know it, and pushing Tesla’s valuation to record levels.

None of these things are anywhere close to reality, it’s a fictional premise built on top of another, but without that initial foundation being in place, none of the rest matters. It’s just ideas, which Tesla may well be thinking about, and could even be working towards in some capacity. But until it navigates the first hurdle, it’s all irrelevant.

The same with building a city on Mars. SpaceX has barely achieved orbit, while its most recent rocket launches have exploded spectacularly. Yet Musk is already talking about regular travel to Mars, and setting the scene for a futuristic city on the red planet. None of that is close to reality either, though at the same time, I guess someone has to be thinking big if we ever want to achieve it.

But the point is Elon’s visions are not entirely grounded in reality.

Which makes a ticket to Mars as a prize pretty much worthless.

But if you do predict all the winners for March Madness, you don’t have to accept a fictional Mars ticket, with X also offering an optional $250,000 cash prize, along with a year of free residential Starlink service.

Spoiler alert: The winner, if there is one, will be taking the cash.

As X notes, if there is no perfect bracket, the next closest winner will get $100k, while four fantasy game winners will also receive $10k each.

So there are other prizes that are real, and this is an actual competition, with actual prizes, not just some fantasy sweepstakes for metaphorical magic beans.

But yeah, offering a ticket to Mars is certainly a choice.

X users will need to register beforehand, and enter their brackets in the app.

X says that people can follow @Sports for updates on its Bracket Challenge.