The vastness of space is a topic that has been researched and discussed by organizations, independent scientists, authors, and entrepreneurs over the past decades. Among famous people who take interest in space is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company.
As of 2021, his main focus seems to be making Mars a habitable planet by increasing its temperature. Over the last few years, Elon Musk has both impressed and shocked the public with numerous quotes about the future of space and our role in it. Let’s take a look.
Mars Quotes by Elon Musk
“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”
“Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.”
“You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.”
“Mars is the only place in the solar system where life can become multi-planetarian.”
“It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.”
“My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that can re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.”
“The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.”
“SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have a linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.”
“You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.”
“The pace of progress on Mars depends upon the pace of progress of SpaceX.”
SpaceX Quotes
“There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. A failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
“Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.”
“The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multi-planetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet, and eventually, there’s going to be an extinction event.”
“On one of the SpaceX flights, we had a secret payload: a wheel of cheese. We flew to orbit and brought it back, so it was the world’s first ‘space cheese.’ It was, in part, a tribute to Monty Python.”
“As you heat the planet, it’s just like boiling a pot.”
“It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you’re not moving faster than the speed of light, but it’s space that’s moving.”
“For us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.”
“If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.”
“The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.”
“I’m trying to construct a world that maximizes the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.”
“SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.”
“If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.”
“What I’m trying to do is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.”
“I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.”
“If we’re going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilization.”
“I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.”
“Indeed, SpaceX is partially a government contractor, but it would be unfair to say that SpaceX is entirely a government contractor.”
Who Is the Author of the Listed Quotes?
We feel like you probably already know a lot about Elon Musk, who is one of the greatest innovators and entrepreneurs of our time. The fact that he is focusing on making life on the planet Earth more sustainable while researching space and its possibilities for a multi-planetary civilization is of utmost importance.
Wrap Up
At the end of the day, Elon Musk has done a lot by bringing the vastness of space and the idea of multiplanetary civilization closer to the general public. Hence, it is safe to expect that Elon Musk and his SpaceX team will continue to progress and who knows, maybe even turn Mars into a habitable planet.