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Fresh off shifting his priorities from DOGE to SpaceX, Elon Musk has shared a chilling reason for his mission to colonize Mars.
The aerospace company CEO, who has stepped back from leading the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, explained that humankind may need the Red Planet for plain survival.
Musk pointed out that the sun is projected to run out of energy and turn into a red giant star that will swallow Mercury, Venus and potentially Earth.
‘Mars is life insurance for life collectively,’ he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters in an interview aired on Monday.
‘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.’
While that is not expected to happen for another 5billion years, according to NASA, it isn’t keeping Musk from aggressively pursuing his project on Mars.
His efforts include working to send Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus, to Mars aboard a SpaceX Starship late next year. If that mission is a success, Musk believes humans could begin landing on Mars between 2029 and 2031.
‘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,’ he said.
‘If the resupply ships are necessary for Mars to survive, then we have not created life insurance.’
Musk, who is Tesla’s chief executive and owns X (formerly Twitter), enjoyed a praise-filled exit from The White House last week, with the Trump administration stressing that he will not entirely disappear from the West Wing.
At the start of May, President Donald Trump in a boost to Musk proposed slashing $6.3billion from NASA while adding $650million for programs focused on Mars. The budget proposal stands to greatly benefit SpaceX, which is one of NASA’s largest contractors.
The move has been met with some criticism and concerns over Musk’s influence on Trump.
‘SpaceX’s handprints are all over this,’ Mo Islam, co-founder of the commercial space news site Payload, told The New York Times.
‘I don’t see there is any other way to look at it. SpaceX is positioned to be the primary beneficiary of the majority of these budgetary moves.’
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