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Elon Musk is, well, controversial to put it mildly. But if there’s one thing most people can agree on, it’s that he’s ambitious. That and he really likes Mars.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of eventually flying to and colonizing Mars. He’s repeatedly said over that he wants to die on Mars, often adding the caveat that he would prefer not to die from a rocket crashing into the planet’s surface. Although his Starship megarocket is proceeding through testing, it doesn’t appear ready for a trip to Mars for at least several more years.
But, in recent months, SpaceX employees have been directed to begin creating designs and details for a Martian city, the New York Times reports. A team of industrial designers have envisioned a colony centered around a “giant dome,” with smaller domes surrounding it. Two people familiar with the matter said Musk is focusing on making sure the city looks cool, according to the Times.
Part of the problem with such an endeavor is that it’s never been done before. Musk in April told employees he expects 1 million people to live on Mars in about 20 years. He had previously said that it would take between 40 years and a century to establish a self-sustaining civilization on the planet.
SpaceX has assigned teams to draw up plans for the domes and work on spacesuits suitable for Mars’s environment, while a medical team is researching whether humans can have kids on the planet, according to the Times. Musk has “volunteered his sperm to help seed a colony,” the Times wrote, citing two people familiar with his comments.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, which Musk owns, he denied parts of the Times’ report.
“I have not [for what it’s worth] ‘volunteered my sperm,” he wrote. “No one at SpaceX has been directed to work on a Mars city. When people have asked to do so, I’ve said we need to focus on getting there first.”
SpaceX is also researching how to make a potential colony self-sustainable. The company has partnered with plant-based meat company Impossible Foods to both provide food in SpaceX’s dining areas, as well as a potential source of protein for a Mars colony, The Times reports. SpaceX also plans to bring plants and animals on its initial voyage to Mars.
And SpaceX isn’t the only company involved in Musk’s plans for Mars. His The Boring Company, a private tunneling firm, was created in part to prepare equipment to dig under Mars’s surface, the Times reports. X will help test how a citizen-led government that “rules by consensus” could work on Mars. And residents of the eventual colony would, of course, drive a variant of Tesla’s Starship-inspired Cybertrucks.