Image from the film “Alone on Mars” by Ridley Scott
Elon Musk shared his plan to colonize the planet Mars a few days ago. Its objective: to mobilize 1,000 spaceships to build a prosperous civilization on the red planet.
For years, Elon Musk has had a dream worthy of science fiction films: colonizing Mars. The CEO of SpaceX, his astronautics company, already famous for its extraordinary ambitions, recently revealed the pharaonic dimensions of his project on his social network X: building a self-sufficient city on the red planet by mobilizing 1,000 spaceships.
A project born from an old passion
Long before founding SpaceX in 2002, Elon Musk was already obsessed with the idea of making humanity a multi-planetary species. The billionaire has been a member for several years of the Mars Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to Martian exploration.
Since then, his ambitions have taken on a whole new dimension. SpaceX, which he founded with profits from the sale of PayPal, is today recognized in the field of space exploration. With an estimated value of $180 billion and technical successes such as the Starship, a reusable rocket capable of carrying more than 100 tons, the company appears well on its way to turning this dream into reality.
A thousand ships and a decade of preparations
According to Musk, successfully building a colony on Mars will require titanic resources. The program is based on three pillars:
- Gigantic and reusable rockets, capable of drastically reducing launch costs.
- A fleet financed by public and private capital, capable of transporting up to 100,000 people at each orbital synchronization.
- A long-term strategy, planning thousands of launches to create a city of one million inhabitants.
In 2020, Elon Musk estimated that launching a Starship could cost just $2 million, a pittance by current space industry standards. With a goal of 100 ships built per year, SpaceX could have 1,000 Starships within 10 years, capable of transporting one megaton of materials annually.
-In 2019, the billionaire claimed that a ticket to Mars could cost less than $100,000. “Going to live on Mars will one day cost less than 500,000 dollars, and perhaps less than 100,000,” he indicated on X. “A low enough amount that most people in developed countries could sell their homes on Earth and move to Mars if they wanted.”
A societal vision for Mars
Elon Musk also shared his societal vision for Mars. Favorable to a “direct democracy” rather than a “representative democracy”, he recommends that the first inhabitants decide for themselves their mode of governance. In his eyes, colonizing Mars is not just about survival, but about building a thriving civilization.
A necessity for Elon Musk
The first uncrewed Starship missions could take off as early as 2026, with a goal of landing humans on Mars four years later. The ideal conditions for the launch, which occur every 26 months, will punctuate the stages of this project.
For Elon Musk, Martian colonization is a necessity. Faced with the risks weighing on humanity – asteroids, pandemics, global warming – he sees Mars as an insurance of survival and an opportunity for the human species to reinvent itself.
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