Elon Musk: Just 1% for Mars—A Backup for Humanity and a Reason to Dream

Elon Musk: Let's allocate 1% of our efforts to make life multiplanetary. I think it's worth it.

“I do think that 99% of our effort should be focused on Earth, and really, 99.9% of our effort is focused on Earth. But I do think it's worth taking 1% and trying to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars and make life multiplanetary.

There are a couple of good reasons for that.

First of all, there's always the possibility that there could be some terrible thing that happens on Earth that we maybe don't anticipate.

If you look at the fossil record, you see that there have been five major extinction events in the last 500 million years.

What happened to the dinosaurs? They used to be here. They're not around anymore.

That's the defensive argument. And then there's what I call the inspiration argument or the excitement.

Building a city on Mars would just be this incredible adventure. There would be things in life that are exciting and inspiring, that when you wake up in the morning, you're like, yes, I'm glad to be alive. I think having this great adventure would be like that.”

Interview with the Chinese Television, April 25, 2015