SpaceX founder and billionaire Elon Musk has long been a proponent of human expansion off of Earth, with the imperative to get a foothold in the solar system—Mars.
Musk believes that Mars, as the closest and most suitable, gives human beings a means of survival against extinction should there ever be an apocalypse on planet Earth.
That "if" is a near-term one, however. In the very long term, the event is a certainty. The sun is becoming increasingly brighter and hotter as it ages, and in a few hundred million years, all this additional energy will disintegrate the atmosphere of Earth and evaporate its oceans. This should be the end of life on Earth. The coup de grâce will arrive around five billion years from now when our sun expands into a red giant, finally engulfing and devouring Earth.
Musk referenced this grim future in a recent Fox News interview with host Jesse Watters, who asked why the world's richest man is so fixated on Mars.
"That's one of the benefits of Mars, is life insurance for life in general," Musk said in the interview, which aired on May 6. "Eventually all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun. The sun is gradually expanding, and so we do eventually have to be a multiplanet civilization because Earth will be incinerated."
Musk, also the head of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration, tasked with reducing costs and regulations, has estimated that human civilization has some 450 million years before the planet becomes too hot to support life. This provides SpaceX with ample time to develop and iterate Starship, the fully reusable megaship that Musk feels will make it economically viable to colonize Mars.
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