Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with his technology and genes: report

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly expressed his desire to build a colony on Mars, but it is not clear how this ambitious task can be achieved. Beyond the massive technical lift, filling such a base once humanity reaches the Red Planet is another challenge. According to a Thursday report in the New York Times, one possibility for Musk is to use his sperm to give birth to new inhabitants of Mars.

“Musk has volunteered to seed the colony,” the Times report said, citing anonymous sources, with a research team tasked with determining “whether people can have children there.” As Musk ramps up efforts to turn his vision into reality, other groups are exploring designs for habitats and spacesuits.

The world's richest man is already the father of 12 children, including six from his previous marriage, three with Canadian electronic pop artist Claire Boucher (née Grimes) and three with Neuralink executive Shivonne Zillis. Sperm donor is registered to fill the planet, the number of sperm seeds can grow significantly.

Contributing his DNA to the Mars mission was the most eye-opening revelation in the Times report, which delved into the field's broader space plan. The tech mogul's latest public comment regarding his Mars ambitions came at SpaceX's Starbase presentation in Brownsville, Texas, in April.

“The main thing is that we need enough people on Mars and enough tons to keep Mars alive even if something happens to Earth,” he told the audience, emphasizing his desire to see Earth grow. It is possible. But there are some things that may be out of our control, so we want to get to Mars as soon as possible to become a self-sustaining civilization.

“I think this can be done in about 20 years,” he asserted.

Musk's attention has been divided by various business interests, including Twitter, Tesla, xAI, and Neuralink—as well as public battles with former business partner OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—as Musk continues to push for SpaceX's repeatable rockets and human mission to Mars. Technology.

In the year SpaceX, founded by Musk in 2002, pioneered a private space exploration industry that includes Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. In the year In 2006, SpaceX was awarded a $396 million contract by NASA to fly and operate the International Space Station, and last month the company chose to remove it from orbit at the end of the mission.

Musk has emphasized on many occasions the importance of humans being a multi-planet species.

“Ultimately, we're going to have to build more ships from boosters, especially for Mars,” Musk said. Because to use the ship, you want to isolate the ship and use it for raw materials on Mars, he said.

SpaceX's Starlink internet service will play its part in the effort to get humans to the stars.

“We want Earth to be as good as possible and Mars to be as great as possible,” Musk said. “So Starlink is doing a tremendous amount of that, and we're learning a lot by having this large fleet. Starlink is going to be very important to Mars and high-bandwidth communications.”

But before SpaceX can land humans on the Red Planet, Musk said it's important to prove permanent living on the moon.

“Ultimately, I think we want to build a moon base, a moon base alpha, and have a permanent base on the moon,” Musk said. “And you'll have a lot of ships that are special to go to the moon and take off, but they don't land back on Earth, they're going to be put in pellet booster tankers to get overfill.”

Starting from the moon, Musk told the audience that travelers would be heading to Mars in giant Starships designed by SpaceX. Musk said the trips would take 26 months.

The Times report describes how Musk's other companies will play a role in the Mars mission, including the Boring Company's expertise in underground tunnels, Tesla's Cybertruck to drive cars to get around the service, and Twitter (aka X) to build a “citizen-led” model of government by consensus.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment from Decrypt.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.