+

Cookies on the Business Insider India website

Business Insider India has updated its Privacy and Cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the better experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we\'ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Insider India website. However, you can change your cookie setting at any time by clicking on our Cookie Policy at any time. You can also see our Privacy Policy.

Close
HomeQuizzoneWhatsappShare Flash Reads
 

Elon Musk: We need to leave Earth as soon as possible for one critical reason

Oct 10, 2015, 19:45 IST

Advertisement
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

In all the billions and billions of planets in our home galaxy, humanity happens to find itself on one perfectly suited for life.

Earth isn't without its hazards though. The planet has seen five mass extinctions throughout its history, due to cataclysmic disasters like giant asteroids and massive volcanic eruptions.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is worried about the next apocalypse.

He's so concerned that he thinks we need to get off Earth and become a multi-planet species as quickly as possible, according to a post written by blogger Tim Urban called How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars.

Musk's reasoning is straightforward. Maybe by the time the next giant asteroid heads our way, we'll have the technology to shield the planet or redirect the space rock. But if it's something more catastrophic, like a nearby star exploding, we may all get vaporized. Musk says we can't afford to wait around and find out.

Advertisement

In his blog post, Urban gives us another way to think about it: Imagine Earth as a hard drive, and every species is a word document saved on that hard drive. The hard drive has already crashed five times (those five mass extinctions), and each time it loses a huge chunk of those documents (species going extinct). So you can think of the human species as an incredibly valuable document created on that hard drive:

That's exactly why Musk is so hellbent on Mars - it could become humanity's backup drive.

Musk doesn't want to send a handful of colonists, either; he'd like to launch 1 million people to the red planet. If we want anything resembling the industry and infrastructure here on Earth, and ample genetic diversity, then we'll need at least that many people to get things going. That's the only way we'll survive as a species on Mars, Musk reportedly told Urban.

Later this year, via his rocket company SpaceX, Musk plans to reveal a spacecraft designed to carry as many as 100 people at a time to the red planet. In the meantime, he's teased the world with a vision of how he'd land humans on Mars in a capsule called Red Dragon:

Advertisement
Read Urban's full series about Elon Musk and his grand plans at Wait But Why.

NOW WATCH: Here's how NASA astronauts wash their hair in zero gravity

Please enable Javascript to watch this video
You are subscribed to notifications!
Looks like you've blocked notifications!
Next Article