AFPAccording to Elon Musk we need to hurry up and colonise Mars, before we do something stupid like nuke ourselves off Earth.
The SpaceX CEO revealed in an interview with GQ that he’s fairly confident humanity will make it to Mars and even build a liveable city, but that we need to do it before a massive calamity destroys our current home planet.
Musk described planetary colonisation in similar terms to saving a back up file of an important essay – “You back up your hard drive… maybe we should back up life, too?” – and added that SpaceX are working on something at the moment, but they want to be totally sure before they announce it because he ‘thinks it’s gonna seem pretty crazy’.
Bryan Versteeg/Spacehabs.comAnd once the ‘crazy’ plan is ready Musk wants to send astronauts ASAP, due to the likelihood of nuclear war:
I don’t think we can discount the possibility of a third World War. In 1912, they were proclaiming a new age of peace and prosperity … and then you had World War I followed by World War II followed by the Cold War. Perhaps there’s a complacency and arrogance in assuming this won’t happen again.
If a massive disaster like this were to happen he predicts it could be ‘far worse than anything that’s happened before’ – potentially setting space technology back decades. According to Engadget Musk has previously said he thinks true artificial intelligence might also pose a threat to our future, giving him even more reason to colonise the Red Planet.
He went on to say: “It would be, I think sort of immoral not to [colonise Mars], if it meant preservation of life on Earth as we know it.”
Now we just need to sit back and wait for Ryanair to start offering dirt cheap flights up there. And you thought those two hours sat next to the pissed up stag do on their way to Prague dragged on…
