Elon Musk’s plan for the planet: “Eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun”

This week it was confirmed that Elon Musk is stepping back from his role in charge of the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) amid huge controversy about the program’s success.

Musk will waste little time before moving on to his next endeavour and has already made bold claims about a potential future on Mars. The SpaceX owner has previously indicated his desire to help support missions to Mars and said on Monday that he sees it as a potential “life insurance” for humanity.

“Mars is life insurance for life collectively. So, 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,” Musk revealed in an interview on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime‘.

He continued: “The fundamental fork in the road of destiny [is] that Mars is sufficiently self-sustaining and can grow by itself if the 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.”

Why is Musk targeting Mars?

As the absence of life on Mars makes clear, it’s not the easier place for life as we know it to survive. There are precious few signs of water on the planet’s surface and the lack of atmosphere would require an incredible feat of engineering to allow even a small number of humans to live there temporarily.

However a post on the SpaceX website outlines some reasons for cautious optimism:

“At an average distance of 140 million miles, Mars is one of Earth’s closest habitable neighbors. Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth is, so it still has decent sunlight.”

“It is a little cold, but we can warm it up. Its atmosphere is primarily CO2 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, which means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere. Gravity on Mars is about 38% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around. Furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth.”

That’s about it, as far as the positives for now. But Musk has amassed a staggering personal wealth and he could well be one of the first people to really push towards the new frontier in space exploration.

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