Ella Scott
Elon Musk has issued a stark warning about the Earth’s potential ‘fate’, claiming Mars could be the human race’s ‘sufficiently self-sustaining’ destiny.
53-year-old Musk has advocated moving human life to Mars since the early 00s, having once tried to buy a Russian rocket to reach the Red Planet.
In 2011, he promised to put a man on Mars within the decade and in 2016, he finally outlined his initial plans for total planet colonization.
At the time, he claimed to envision a large-scale civilization that would allow humanity to become multi-planetary and survive if Earth were ever destroyed.
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According to a 2024 report by The New York Times, the Tesla CEO has been fascinated with the planet since reading Isaac Asimov's 1951 science fiction novel Foundation when he was just 10 years old.
As Musk’s controversial stint with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) comes to an end, the businessman has revealed he’s turning his attention to making his Mars movements a reality.
On Monday (May 5), the SpaceX founder sat down with Fox News, where he described his plans as ‘life insurance for life collectively’.
“Eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun,” he prophesied.
“The sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated.”
Scientists have previously stated that our Sun will eventually expand to 1,000 times its size and ‘instantly’ destroy Earth.
A paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal, outlined that the phenomenon isn’t likely to occur for several billion years.
Musk continued, describing Mars as a ‘sufficiently self-sustaining’ destiny that can grow by itself if so-called ‘resupply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason’.
“Whether that is because civilization died with a bang or a whimper. If the resupply ships are necessary for Mars to survive, then we have not created life insurance.
"We've not created life insurance for life collectively. So that's the key point in the future where [the] destiny of life, as we know it, will forever be affected, is when Mars becomes self-sustaining.”
Earlier this year, the technology titan took to Twitter to reveal a SpaceX Starship would ‘hopefully’ depart for Mars at the end of 2026, carrying Tesla’s humanoid robot called Optimus.
“Starship will hopefully depart for Mars at the end of next year with Optimus explorer robots!," he wrote.
The robots, unveiled at Tesla’s ‘We, Robot’ event in October 2024, were initially pitched as household helpers capable of performing basic tasks.
“It'll do anything you want," Musk said at the showcase. "It can be a teacher, babysit your kids. It can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do."
Speaking about plans to send a rocket to Mars in 2026, Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, told Newsweek: "If you take Starship as the vehicle, there were partial successes and partial failures.
“But it's a long learning curve and so in my estimation, there'd have to be dozens of various Starship demonstrations and test launches before you could send humans on that perilous trip.
“There's essentially no way humans are going to be on Mars while Trump is in office. It's just not possible."
Last month, Musk announced he would be stepping back from his role in the Trump administration’s cost-cutting team, DOGE.
When asked about his departure, Trump said: “We have to, at some point, let him go and do that. We expected to be doing it about this time. I'll talk to Elon about it.”
Trump also hailed him as a ‘great patriot’, remarking that Tesla would be ‘taken care of’ once he returns to overseeing the business.