Elon Musk: SpaceX’s Goal Is a City on Mars as Fast as Possible

Elon Musk: SpaceX's overarching goal is to build a city on Mars as soon as possible.

“[Starship development] is a rapidly changing situation. Think of it like a guided missile: A guided missile is going in the wrong direction at any given point in time, but it course-corrects. You don't want to be a super precise cannonball when you don't even know where the target is.

The overarching optimization [at SpaceX] is what is the fastest time to a city on Mars, with the subsets: fastest time to a fully reusable rocket and fastest time to orbit.

All of the initial [Starship] production is simply a learning exercise. None of the initial ones will be long-term. So it's really just a question of what knowledge can you learn in the shortest period of time.”

The Everyday Astronaut, August 11, 2021