Musk explains how industry can be built on Mars: 'You start with mining'

Musk explains how industry can be built on Mars: 'You start with mining'

World's richest person, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, said that human race has to recreate the "entire base of industry of Earth" on Mars. He was speaking on what was needed to place nearly one million people on the red planet.

"We are here talking of a massive pyramid of industry that starts with mining a vast array of materials. Those materials [will then] go through hundreds of steps of refinement. We then grow food, obviously. We grow trees. We make things out of those trees. You have got to build all that on Mars," he said on the podcast 'Verdict with Ted Cruz', co-hosted by Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson.

"Mars is a hostile environment. It sometimes gets above zero degree on a warm summer day near the equator on Mars. Its quite cold," Musk said on the podcast.

Commenting on how humans can sustain on Mars at such cold temperatures, the billionaire said that initially a "life support habitation module" was needed. "You can't just live outdoors. You can't breathe the air," Musk added. He noted that this could be done through a "glass dome" like structure.

"I have a philosophy of curiosity. I want to find out the nature of the universe. And in order to do that, we have to travel to other planets, see other star systems, maybe other galaxies, find other alien civilizations or perhaps the remnants of alien civilizations. We must gain a better understanding of where the universe is going, from where did we come from, and what questions do we not yet know to ask about the universe," Musk further said.

When asked when will he land on Mars if humans succeed in landing on the planet in 2029, Musk said that depends on various factors. "The important thing is we build a self-sustaining city on Mars, as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when that city can continue to prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming," he said.

Musk said it would take 20 years to build such a self-sustaining city on the red planet. "A few people running on the surface in a hostile environment is not going to make it self-sustaining. So you are going to need, on the order of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo," he added.

Also read: Elon Musk on how human colony in Mars will be governed

"Mars was always going to be the destination after Moon. If you told people in 1969 that by 2025 we hadn't even returned to the Moon, let alone Mars, they would think civilization has collapsed," he said.