SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made another wild claim that certainly won’t come true. The multi-billionaire who claimed that Neuralink will merge humanity with AI has now claimed that SpaceX will bring around a million human beings to Mars in less than 30 years’ time.
Will SpaceX take a million humans to Mars?
Taking humans to the surface of Mars is currently the big goal of space organisations. SpaceX, Blue Origin and, of course, NASA are attempting to get boots on the ground of the Martian surface. Essentially, it’s the new Moon Landing.
SpaceX and NASA seem more likely to reach their goals of landing humans on Mars. For example, SpaceX appears confident that a small team will arrive on the red planet by 2030. However, CEO Elon Musk is hyping up — and overhyping at that — colonisation of the alien rock.
Via Gizmodo, Musk has claimed numerous times over the course of half-a-decade that a million humans could live on Mars by 2015. Initially pitched in 2016, a huge year for the company, this is a statement that Elon Musk has repeatedly echoed.
Most recently, Musk reiterated this claim in a 2022 TED interview at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Texas. The billionaire claimed that in just a few decades, at least a million people will live on the Red Planet, inspired by sci-fi like Battlestar Galactica.
Musk’s lofty, ambitious goals — and certainly not just hyping up impossible claims — pitch 1000 Starship rockets going back and forth between Earth and Mars to create a Martian city. A city that will be governed by the “People of Mars”. But these numbers are simply not doable.
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A Martian City is generations away
Making Mars a habitable planet for workers and children is generations away, it’s madness to think otherwise. Even if SpaceX can get humans to Mars by 2030, which could be possible despite NASA’’s estimates of 2040, creating a million-person city in 20 years is just not possible.
Elon Musk has said numerous times that the first years on Mars will be “dangerous, cramped, difficult” and “hard work.” The billionaire even said that many people might not return; of course, Musk himself won’t be making the trip.
Currently, SpaceX’s big reusable Starship can’t even land on The Moon. In fact; the vessel isn’t even space-ready yet. But in less than 30 years, it’s supposed to be able to travel 33.9 million miles — minimum — and back on a regular basis.
Can SpaceX do it? Or is Elon Musk speaking out of his rectum? Well, it seems pretty obvious that SpaceX can’t, and while it would be awesome to be proven wrong, the numbers just don’t add up.
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How many people want to live on Mars?
Of course, Musk’s lofty goal of having a million civilians on Mars doesn’t even take into account that many people would like to remain on Earth. You know, the planet with lush greenery, gorgeous beaches and miraculous animals. In comparison, Mars blows.
With Musk not announcing that he will indeed go to Mars, or even space, on a SpaceX vessel, there’s not that much confidence that the commercialised space industry will be as large as some will it to be.