ARTICLE AD BOX
Billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is continuing to push his outlandish plan to save humanity from extinction by moving to Mars.
As a part of the spaceflight company’s Occupy Mars mission, the Tesla co-founder aims to establish a self-sustaining colony on the Red Planet, in order to fulfill his hope of creating a multi-planetary human species in the coming decades.
Previously he had predicted that an uncrewed landing on the red planet could happen as soon as 2026, with humans there before 2030.
“It’s not about going to Mars to visit once, but it is to make life multi-planetary so that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe and to ensure the long-term survival of civilization in the hopefully unlikely event that something terrible happens to Earth that there is a continuance of consciousness on Mars,” Musk told Fox News host Jesse Watters this week.
He said going to Mars served as an insurance plan for humans, predicting that Earth would somehow be incinerated by the sun in “hundreds of millions of years.” While the star may swallow the Earth — but it won’t be for billions of years.
“That’s one of the benefits from Mars, it’s life insurance collectively. Eventually, all life on earth will be destroyed by the sun, the sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated,” said Musk.
Until then, Musk reportedly also has a plan to repopulate the Earth with more babies of “high intelligence.” He is the father of at least 14 children with four women, and has often posted on social media about population decline.
“I think for most countries, they should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem they need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter,” he said at a conference last year.
This isn’t the first time Musk has made these comments. He’s worn an “Occupy Mars” t-shirt for years, and first brought up the idea of colonization in the early 2000s. Since then, Musk has pushed for Mars missions, planning in the 2010s to launch as soon as 2018, according to Business Insider.
"It's something we can do in our lifetimes,” he said during a speech in 2016. “You could go.”
But scientists have said Musk’s Mars vacation will not happen any time soon. That’s largely due to the complicated design and mission for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, among other concerns. Previous test flights have resulted in fiery explosions.
“It’s like announcing a camping trip on your next available weekend, without having purchased any camping supplies. And your car is in the shop. And has exploded,” cosmologist Dr. Paul Sutter said in an op-ed published in Scientific American last month.
Even if these plans are one day feasible, the question remains: Why would anyone want to go to Mars? In addition to being incredibly risky, it’s 140 million miles from Earth. Astronauts that will head there under NASA’s Artemis mission will be in flight for roughly three years, if they make it.
While the space agency has been hunting for signs of ancient microbial life on the celestial body, which once had rivers and lakes, it’s currently dry, cold and extremely dusty.
But, SpaceX says that’s not a problem. Like on Earth, humans can “warm it up.” At least, until the need to move again.
English (US) ·