SpaceX owner Elon Musk detailed his push to make the human race mutli-planetary is to provide it insurance, specifically to save it from being “incinerated” by the sun.
The world’s richest man explained that his ambitions to travel to Mars are meant to “better understand the nature of the universe,” as well as provide the human race with “life insurance.” Musk has pushed for years to expand humanity’s presence on Mars, and claimed in his new interview that the sun poses an extinction-level threat to humanity.
“So eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun,” Musk explained on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime. “The sun is gradually expanding, and so we do, at some point, need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated.”
Watters responded by saying this was the first time he had heard that the sun will eventually scorch the Earth, prompting Musk to add that he does not think anyone would disagree with his assessment.
Despite his warning, Musk suggested the human race has another “several hundred-million years” left before this eventual apocalypse, but warned that people should not “hold your breath” that they will be ok. He estimated that Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, and that the planet has “about 10% more life in it” before rising temperatures make it impossible to sustain life on the planet.
When pressed on his plan for Mars, Musk detailed how his plans for the red planet go beyond “flags and footprints,” and include creating a “self-sustaining city” on the planet. He warned that if Mars’s supply from Earth eventually ceased, the human civilization on the former planet would not have the “life insurance” that he is working towards.
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Musk’s interest in colonizing Mars dates back to the early 2000s, as he revealed in his biography, released in 2023, that he grew interested in this possibility after discovering that NASA had no plans to travel to Mars. This prompted him to go to a library to read up on rocket engineering, as well as asking rocket experts if he could borrow their old engine manuals.
His mission to travel to Mars comes as he is working with the Trump administration, stating over the weekend that he and President Donald Trump “almost always agree.” Musk’s biography details a private meeting he had with Trump in December 2016, in which Trump revealed he “really wanted to get NASA going again.”