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Elon Musk recently said he aims to get humans to Mars by 2026, which is seven years before NASA plans to land astronauts there.
Multibillionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said at the Mars Society Virtual Convention 2020 that he has a goal of creating a self-sustaining city on Mars before a possible World War 3.
“I think it is beneficial to have the goal of creating a self-sustaining city on Mars,” he said. “This should be the goal, not just a few people or a base, but a self-sufficient city”.
Musk said at the time that it is important to test whether the Mars colony would go extinct if for some reason, even nuclear destruction, it stopped coming from Earth. “If so, we are not in a safe place,” he noted.
“Will we be able to create a self-sufficient city on Mars before or after World War III? Hopefully there will never be a third world war, however [the probability of creating] na is low ”.
“We should try to make this city self-sufficient for every possible World War 3,” said Musk.
However, he said it is just a series of opportunities facing humanity: “There is a chance that we might have a massive war, a super volcano, or a comet attack – or we could just extinguish ourselves.”
“To be honest, civilization doesn’t look super strong right now, you know, we look a little rickety now,” he added.
The tech magnate said Mars is not an escape route until it is made self-sufficient, but noted that it probably wouldn’t happen in its lifetime.
“There is no point in having an escape lifeboat if you just move to another place where you will soon become extinct. That doesn’t count ”, he said.
“This is really about minimizing existential risks to civilization as a whole and having a future where we are a space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species,” explained Musk.
Earlier, Musk’s neighbor on Forbes’ list of the world’s best billionaires Bill Gates, in an interview with a video blogger, explained the main threats to humanity after the COVID-19 pandemic is over. He said there are two major threats: climate change and bioterrorism, adding that humanity could increase its readiness for global pandemics to minimize the death toll.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has conducted a second high-altitude flight test with its Starship heavy-lift vehicle, which is currently one of the billionaire’s primary weapons in the fight to colonize Mars.
However, the two high-altitude tests were semi-successful, with both vehicles launching successfully, reversing, but making a hard landing, resulting in their destruction.