If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilizations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilizations.
— Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX (and Tesla), on the importance of multi-planetary living. In an interview with Aeon Magazine, Musk talks about sending people to live on Mars, as he has for a while now. But will he himself go there one day? I d like to go, but if there is a high risk of death, I wouldn t want to put [SpaceX] in jeopardy. I only want to go when I could be confident that my death wouldn t result in the primary mission of the company falling away, he told Aeon. As for those who might want to go to Mars: It s not going to be a vacation jaunt. It s going to be saving up all your money and selling all your stuff, like when people moved to the early American colonies.
Photo of Elon Musk by Nhat V. Meyer/Mercury News archives
