“Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars”

Elon: With each launch, especially early on, we learn more about what’s needed to make life multiplanetary and improve Starship to take hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to Mars.

Ideally, we can take anyone who wants to go and bring all equipment necessary to make Mars self-sustaining, so Mars can grow by itself.

Worst-case scenario, we reach the point where Mars can continue to grow even if supply ships from Earth stop for any reason.

At that point, we’ve achieved civilization resilience, where Mars could rescue Earth or vice versa.

Having two self-sustaining planets is incredibly important for long-term survival. A multi-planet civilization is likely to last ten times longer than a single-planet one because of risks like World War III, meteors, or supervolcanoes. With two planets, we keep going, then move beyond Mars to the asteroid belt, Jupiter’s moons, and other star systems, making science fiction reality. To achieve this, we need rapidly reusable rockets to keep the cost per ton to Mars as low as possible. That’s essential. We need rapidly reliable rockets—it’s like a pirate’s “Rrrr”: rapidly reusable, reliable rockets!

Image Courtesy SpaceX, Inc and source Elon Musk’s Mars 2026 company talk.