Niamh Shackleton
Elon Musk has shared more details on his plans to make Mars habitable for humans.
For a very long time, Musk has made his intentions clear to send humans to Mars with the help of his space technology company SpaceX.
The 53-year-old billionaire is so set on humans creating life on Mars that he has even expressed his hopes to die on the Red Planet.
In an unusual joint interview with Donald Trump in February, Musk said: "They ask me ‘Do you want to die on Mars?’ and I say ‘Yes but not on impact’."
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And it seems as if Musks schedule to colonize Mars is well and truly underway after he recently won a vote to construct his own city as SpaceX's Texas-based HQ, which he wants to be known as Starbase.
Apparently creating the city will help SpaceX 'continue building the best community possible for the men and women building the future of humanity's place in space'.
Now Musk has explained why he believes it's so important that we make Mars a suitable home for humans.
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Speaking from Starbase earlier this week, Musk said that SpaceX is measuring its progress on its 'timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars'.
He also spoke about Starship, one SpaceX's spacecrafts, eventually taking hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of people to Mars.
"Ideally we can take anyone who wants to go to Mars," Musk said. "And bring all of the equipment necessary to make Mars self sustaining so that Mars can grow by itself."
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He continued: "The fundamental fork in the road for human destiny is where Mars can continue to grow even if the supply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason.
"At that point we've achieved civilizational resilience where Mars can potentially come to the rescue of Earth if something goes wrong, or maybe Earth could come to the rescue of Mars, but having two planets that are both self sustaining and strong I think is going to be incredibly important for the long term survival of civilization."
Doubling down on Mars being a somewhat back-up plan for humans, the Tesla CEO said: "Any given civilization is likely to last maybe, I don't know, 10 times longer, maybe much longer, if it is a multi-planet civilization than if it is a single-planet civilization."
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Musk has previously spoke of his fears of Earth's future and how it may be 'destroyed by the sun'. He added at the time that making Mars habitable for humans is 'life insurance' for us.