Elon Musk really, really wants to make humanity a multiplanetary species, by establishing a self-sustaining colony on Mars in his lifetime. But his own mortality means time is running out for the 53-year-old billionaire.
Musk has for years emphasised the urgency of his goal, and it is a driving force — the driving force — behind SpaceX’s development of Starship, a spaceship he wants to send, uncrewed, to the red planet by as early as 2026, with a crewed mission to follow by the end of the decade.
Musk’s motive for this urgency? Earth faces existential threats — nuclear war or an asteroid impact, for example — and a Mars colony would act as a “life insurance policy” for humanity. Getting to Mars, however, will entail taking big risks, mastering advanced rocketry and securing eye-watering amounts of capital.
Musk has no problem with the first two.
First, he’s shown a willingness for risk-taking, and frequently expresses frustration with regulators when SpaceX’s rockets are grounded for safety reasons. Recently he even threatened to sue the Federal Aviation Administration for “regulatory overreach” after the agency said it would levy fines against SpaceX over alleged licensing and safety-related violations during two launches in 2023. He’s a man in a hurry and doesn’t like the government telling him what he can and cannot do.
Second, SpaceX has revolutionised rocket launches with the Falcon 9, the first orbital-class rocket whose first-stage boosters — a wildly expensive component — are capable of being reused, reducing overall costs by a factor of six or more over traditional rockets. The boosters are designed to return to Earth, landing vertically on drone ships or — as demonstrated for the first time this month in spectacular style — landing back on the rocket’s own launch pad.
Even for someone of Musk’s immense wealth — $277bn at the time of writing, much of it tied up in Tesla stock — that is a lot of dogecoin
The third challenge is likely to prove the most intractable: securing the money — $1-trillion (or more) by some estimates — to fund his Mars mission. Even for someone of Musk’s immense wealth — $277bn at the time of writing, much of it tied up in Tesla stock — that is a lot of dogecoin.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, author and educator, recently suggested that a solution could come through the US’s rivalry with China, which has its own ambitions to conquer space.
“If the project does not require much money, then private enterprise could do it, because it’s a relatively low risk that fits into their R&D budget,” he said. “But I’m talking about major allocations of the resources of a civilisation, like China building the Great Wall, like Europe building cathedrals and churches, like the Apollo programme or the Manhattan Project,” Tyson said.
“All these [projects] were instigated by governments, or in the case of cathedrals, the praise of a deity. These are forces that dislodge money from the coffers of a civilisation ... When does private enterprise lead us into space? I don’t see that happening. Often it involves risk that a company and its investors will not take unless there is clear return on investment [ROI]. But governments don’t need a financial ROI if they get a geopolitical ROI.”
Is that a significant factor behind Musk’s endorsement of a politician as flawed as Donald Trump? Tyson didn’t speculate on that, but it is plausible that the billionaire’s full-throated endorsement of Trump is at least in part about securing government funding for his Mars colonisation plan.
Tyson hinted that Musk’s Mars ambition would be expedited if China declared it was planning to go. “The US decides, we need to send astronauts to Mars [because of geopolitics] ... Nasa will say: ‘We don’t have a rocket to do that.’ Elon will say: ‘I have a rocket!’ So, we ride Elon’s rocket to Mars.
“That could easily happen. But it will not be a mission initiated by a private company. The money is not going to come from his [SpaceX’s] earnings on anything else he does in space. It will come from taxpayers funding Nasa’s goals, inspired by geopolitics.”
Whatever his motives, Musk’s decision to back Trump is his boldest gamble yet. If Kamala Harris wins Tuesday’s election, getting to Mars may be much more difficult. But if Trump wins, Musk may secure the political backing he needs to fund his mission to make human life multiplanetary.
*McLeod is editor of TechCentral
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