Elon Musk's ambition is to go to Mars via spaceship and build an intergalactic "self-sustaining metropolis" as a result. The 50-year-old billionaire believes that he will need to transport animals into space and breed them on Mars to realize his vision.
He got the idea from the Biblical account of Noah, who God chose to save together with his family and all of Earth's wildlife from a huge flood.
Elon Musk's Plan For 'A Futuristic Noah's Ark'
After being named Time's Person of the Year, Musk expressed his goal to send a "futuristic Noah's Ark."
"And the next really big thing is to build a self-sustaining city on Mars and bring the animals and creatures of Earth there. Sort of like a futuristic Noah's ark," he told Time Magazine.
"We'll bring more than two, though - it's a little weird if there's only two," he added.
The CEO of SpaceX expects people to colonize Mars to escape the effects of climate change on Earth.
"The goal overall has been to make life multi-planetary and enable humanity to become a spacefaring civilization," Musk said. Not because it would be profitable, but because it would be "exciting," at least to him.
Musk's plan to transport animals and people to Mars is scientifically sound. Humans must coexist with other living things in a biosphere. The planet's CO2 atmosphere, on the other hand, is a significant stumbling block for colonization ambitions.
Musk Wants To Bring Rockets On Mars In Five Years
Musk wants to land rockets on Mars within the next five years with his SpaceX, Inside Nova said.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted SpaceX permission to perform an experimental orbital demo and recovery test of its Starship rocket in the first quarter of 2022 on December 9, which means the orbital launch could happen anytime between December 20, 2021, and March 1, 2022, from SpaceX's testing facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
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Musk is still waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) environmental evaluation before launching Starship.
According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the maiden trip into the orbit of Starship would take place in the first three months of 2022.
He stated they're getting close to our first orbital launch during an online meeting hosted by the US government's National Academies.
Scientists Ridicule Elon Musk's Plan
However, not everyone is very confident about these ideas, which experts apparently say are still 'multiple centuries' away from becoming a reality.
Scientist Roger Wiens of New Mexico, who leads the SuperCam laser sensor on Mars' Perseverance rover, told the Mail Online: "Mars, with its CO2 atmosphere, might be a good place to grow plants if they are kept warm and watered, but it would be a terrible place to drop off animals, who need oxygen to breathe.
Humans might be smart enough to don oxygen breathing systems, but would an animal be smart enough to adjust such a system if it was falling off its face? I don't think so. We would end up with a lot of dead animals. Let's try botanical gardens first," Wiens added.
Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist, was also suspicious.
In the same Mail Online report, he also stated that raising animals on Mars would most certainly take centuries. Early Martian inhabitants brought their pets 'towards the end of this century,' according to McDowell.
However, he emphasized that growing cattle or wild animals in large quantities was still a long way off.
He argued that the inevitable long-term logical conclusion of animals, plants, and viruses populating Mars was the 'inevitable.'
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