SpaceX’s plans to colonize Mars

The Future. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is reportedly firming up his plans within the company to build a city on Mars that will house one million people in about 20 years. Although that seems like a moonshot (Mars shot?) and NASA doesn’t foresee any mission even getting to the planet until at least the 2040s, the sense of urgency could lead to several life-sustaining innovations that just so happen to make life on Earth a little more advanced.

Martian Musk
NYT has dug into SpaceX’s revamped Mars-colonization plans thanks to anonymous insiders and internal company documents/emails.

• There are plans to build living quarters aboard the company’s Starship rocket, which would ferry 100 passengers to Mars — a trip that would take roughly nine months.
• Dedicated teams are examining exactly how life on Mars would look, including building domed habitats, developing spacesuits that can handle the planet’s extreme (but possibly livable) environment, and potentially creating artificial suns.
• He struck a partnership with Impossible Foods to test different alternative proteins that could be used to feed people in the Martian city.
• Musk has also assigned a team to figure out if it’s possible to conceive children on Mars and has apparently offered his own sperm to “help seed a colony.” (Musk denies this.)

As is well documented, Musk is a Mars diehard and plans to die there (hopefully not die getting there). According to insiders, Musk envisions that all of his companies will play a role in colonization, including building cities using The Boring Company, residents driving around in a solar-powered version of the Tesla Cybertruck, and running a citizen-led government via X.

Talk about ambitious… but he’ll have to get to the Moon first, as he’s contracted to do by NASA. That alone seems like a ways off.