Dania Aziz
The Elon Musk series consists of a collection of blog articles written by the founder and CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.
The articles contain musings on the future of humanity, the possibility of colonizing other planets, artificial intelligence, and what comes after death.
In his first article Musk shared that he thinks humanity might be at the beginning stages of its exploration into deep space.
Following this, Musk shared that he believes that colonizing other planets might be an inevitable step for the human species.
The future is Mars
In a future with a growing population on Earth and more than 3 billion people living in outer space, Musk postulated that there could be a short period in which the two populations merge.
However, he made it clear that this would only be possible if artificial intelligence and human mining of resources worked together to create a sustainable existence for humanity.
When asked about his own views on the subject, Musk said that he supported colonizing other planets on a long-term basis.
He believes we should start looking for life on Mars as soon as possible.
He stated that the high cost of space travel is the number one reason why people have not been sent to Mars
And that it would be both simpler and cheaper to grow a sustainable colony on Mars.
He goes on to state that “getting there” is only about 0.3% of the problem, but what really matters is “staying there”.
Musk added that colonizing Mars will provide people with the opportunity to become more than just another species on earth.
He also said that science fiction stories about humans living on other planets are either a dream or a warning by our species that it needs to “wake up to reality”.
The steps
So, how do we move the human population to Mars?
The first step will be creating a base on Mars and then getting the first people to Mars with the help of solar-powered spacecraft, then next up is creating the rocket ships themselves.
The smallest group should start off with 100 people and they will all be volunteers or part of a “Mars One” program.
Musk believed that we need at least 1 million people before we can “really” get anywhere.
So, we need a large, sustainable population on Earth.
Musk compared building a Mars colony to building a city on Mars and training the residents of this city.
Next up is building the rockets.
These will be made from basalt, the same material used to make the Martian surface.
The rockets would be able to transport 100 people at a time, slowly and safely moving our population towards Mars.
Finally, we need to turn Mars into the “Earth 2.0”
With a sustainable self-sustaining civilization on Mars.
The colonization of planets and beyond
There is a high probability that we are not alone on this planet.
In an interview with the New York Times, Musk talked about colonizing planets in distant solar systems and what will happen if we ever encounter evidence of life elsewhere in the universe.
According to Musk, it is possible that we are already communicating with alien civilizations.
He stated that any other civilizations would be at least thousands of years more advanced than ours and might not even use the same form of communication we use.
Based on his thoughts and theories, Musk stated that it is possible that we will find out the truth about the universe through a “cosmic search engine”.
He said that any other intelligent species out there could try to communicate, send probes or send messages to us.
This means that any aliens contacting us would have to have a spaceship.
Then, they must navigate a course through space, come close enough to another planet or solar system and use some sort of communication system.
Musk said he thinks it is unlikely that humans will ever encounter them.
But, he does believe that if we do discover evidence for life or intelligence in the universe, it will probably happen in the next few centuries.
Doomed to extinction or not?
In an interview with Aeon magazine, Elon Musk shared his thoughts on the future of our species and the possibility of colonizing other planets.
He said that humankind is bound for extinction if we do not achieve a sustainable existence in space.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, director Christopher Nolan asked Musk how SpaceX will be able to help humanity explore other planets if they still can’t get to Mars.
Musk replied by saying that space exploration is a “key to becoming God”.
“You have to have some pretty deep philosophical points in order to pursue something like this.”
Musk believes that we are on the threshold of creating a sustainable existence in space.
He believes that in the very near future, humanity will be able to do this and that means that life will not be doomed to extinction.
The reality
In an article in The New York Times, Musk stated that it is not a “supernatural” thing to create a sustainable existence in space and that we already have the technology.
However, it will take a lot of time and money to make this happen.
He believes that any substantial amount of time or money would result in humanity having the technology needed for this.
The price of one Falcon 9 rocket is about 700 million dollars.
Musk stated that he thinks it would take about 30 years to get to Mars, travel there and build a sustainable colony.
But if we combine this with solving the problems that are currently facing us on Earth, then it would be worth all the effort.
Later, he said that we need to constantly improve our technology and keep innovating.
Mankind has a long history of being able to think of things that were impossible at the time until someone was able to make it happen.
He added that SpaceX plans on going to Mars, but building a sustainable colony will be a “much greater challenge”.
