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Elon Musk recently said he plans to bring humans to Mars in 2026, which is seven years before NASA aims to land astronauts.
SpaceX billionaire and founder Elon Musk told the Mars Society 2020 Virtual Convention that it aimed to create a self-sufficient city on Mars before a possible third world war.
“I think it’s helpful to aim for the creation of a self-sustaining city on Mars,” he said. “That should be the goal, not just a few people or a base, but a self-sustaining city.”
Musk then said it was important to test whether the Mars colony would run out if they stopped causing supplies from Earth for any reason, including nuclear annihilation. “If it does, we’re not in a safe place,” he noted.
“Can we create a self-sufficient city on Mars before or after World War III? Hopefully, there is never a third world war, but it is [the probability of creating] then it’s low ”.
“We have to try to make this city self-sustaining before any possible third world war,” Musk said.
He said, however, that it is only a series of probabilities facing humanity: “There are some chances that we will have a giant war, a supervolcano or a comet strike, or we may simply self-extinguish ourselves.”
“Honestly, right now, civilization doesn’t seem super strong, we know that, right now we’re looking a little disconcerting,” he added.
The tech mogul said Mars is not an escape option until it becomes self-sustaining, though he noted that this would probably not happen during his lifetime.
“It doesn’t make sense to have an escape lifeboat if you just move to another place where you will soon die. That doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It’s really about minimizing the existential risk to civilization as a whole and having a future where we’re a transatlantic civilization and a multi-planet species,” Musk explained.
Earlier, Musk’s neighbor on Forbes’ list of the world’s best billionaires, Bill Gates, explained in an interview with a video blogger what the main threats to humanity are after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said there are two main threats: climate change and bioterrorism, and added that humanity could increase its preparedness for global pandemics to minimize the death toll.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has conducted a second high-altitude flight test of its Starship heavy vehicle, which is currently one of the billionaire’s main weapons in the battle to colonize Mars.
However, the two high-altitude tests were semi-successful, both vehicles launched successfully, turning back, but making a hard landing, which resulted in their destruction.