Elon Musk has lot going on—Tesla, SpaceX, and X, for starters. But the entrepreneur's priority is establishing a civilization on Mars, the New York Times reports. That dream might be out of reach—"You can't just land one million people on Mars," said an aerospace engineer who knows him—but Musk has told SpaceX employees he expects the planet to have that population in about 20 years. Musk denied the claim in a post on X, but others said he has volunteered his sperm to help make that happen.
Several people, as well as documents reviewed by the Times, indicate that Musk has told employees to work on a design for a city on the planet, down to the details. To most experts, humans living on Mars seems a distant goal in many ways. No one has so much as set foot on the planet, and NASA projects a human landing in the 2040s. When the first arrivals step out of the landing craft, they'll encounter icy weather, dust storms, and air they can't breathe. But Musk not only remains committed to the notion, he's made it the business of the six companies he owns or runs.
He founded the Boring Co., for example, partly to lay the groundwork for burrowing under the surface of Mars. Musk reportedly has said he bought X in part to help test how a citizen-led government might work on Mars. And he's said he sees Tesla's Cybertrucks being driven on the planet by residents. Testifying in court about his Tesla compensation in 2022, Musk said this dream is the reason he stockpiles assets. "It's a way to get humanity to Mars," he said, "because establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars will require a lot of resources." One solution to the obstacles would be groundbreaking: Musk has said he hopes to create his own species that would be suited to life on Mars. (Musk has revised his Mars projections in the past.)
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