SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly expressed his desire to build a colony on Mars, but how this mammoth feat would be accomplished remains unclear. In addition to the sheer technical lift, populating such an outpost once humans arrive on the red planet is another challenge. One option Musk has proposed, according to a report Thursday by The New York times, is to use his sperm to bring new Martians into the world.
The Time The report, based on anonymous sources, said that “Musk has volunteered his sperm to help seed a colony,” and that a research team has been tasked with determining “whether humans can have children there.” Other groups are looking at designs for habitats and spacesuits as Musk ramps up efforts to turn his vision into reality.
The world’s richest man is already the father of 12 children, including six from a previous marriage, three with Canadian electronic pop artist Claire Boucher (aka Grimes) and three with Neuralink CEO Shivon Zilis. As a sperm donor recruited to populate a planet, Musk’s offspring could grow significantly.
Contributing his DNA to a Mars mission was the most illuminating revelation ever. Time report, which detailed Musk’s expansive plans for space. The tech mogul’s most recent public comments about his Mars ambitions came during a presentation at SpaceX’s Starbase in Brownsville, Texas, in April.
“The bottom line is we need enough people and tonnage on Mars so that Mars can survive and retain consciousness even if something happened to Earth,” Musk told the audience, emphasizing a desire to keep Earth thriving for as long as possible. “But there are certain things that are beyond our control, so we just want to get to Mars as quickly as possible and become a self-sustaining civilization.”
“I think this can be achieved within about 20 years,” he claimed.
Though Musk’s attention is spread across multiple business interests including Twitter, Tesla, xAI and Neuralink, and has had public spats with former business partner OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Musk continues to push for humanity to reach Mars using his reusable rockets and technology from SpaceX.
SpaceX, founded in 2002 by Musk, has been a pioneer in the private space industry, which also includes competitors such as Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galatic and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. In 2006, SpaceX was selected by NASA and awarded a $396 million contract to provide flights and services to the International Space Station, and last month the company was chosen to deorbit it at the end of the mission.
Musk has stressed on many occasions that humans must become a multi-planetary species.
“Ultimately, we’re going to have to build a lot more ships than boosters, especially for Mars,” Musk said. “Because you want to actually use the ship, take the ship apart and use it for resources on Mars,” he said.
SpaceX’s Starlink internet service would also play a role in the mission to take humanity to the stars.
“We obviously want Earth to be the best it can be and Mars to be great,” Musk said. “So Starlink does a tremendous amount of that, and we’re learning a lot by having this large fleet. Starlink is also going to be very important for high-bandwidth communications to and on Mars.”
But before SpaceX can land humans on the Red Planet, Musk says it’s necessary to establish a permanent presence on the moon.
“Ultimately, I think we want to build a lunar base, lunar base alpha, and a permanently occupied base on the moon,” Musk said. “And then you have a bunch of ships that specialize in traveling to and from the moon, but they would never land on Earth, they would just dock with pellet fuel tankers and get offloaded.”
Musk told the audience that travelers would travel from the moon to Mars on enormous spaceships designed by SpaceX. The trips would take 26 months, Musk said.
The Time The report outlined how Musk’s other companies could play a role in the Mars mission, including The Boring Company’s expertise in underground tunneling, Tesla’s Cybertruck vehicles for traversing the service and even Twitter (aka X) as a model for “a citizen-led government that governs by consensus.”
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment from Decipher.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.