Musk Plans Mars Colony by 2020 

He's at it again. The fearless inventor of Tesla and SpaceX now has his sights on Mars! It's the only way to save humanity from becoming extinct, says Elon Musk, and he wants to put his money behind his words by ferrying 100 travelers at a time to the red planet. By the end of the 21st Century, Musk says we can have a million people there, all waiting for Earth to extinguish itself either by its own stupidity or by some unknown calamity such as a wayward asteroid smashing into us or perhaps an alien attack.

We must colonize Mars or face extinction, says Musk. All we need to so is shuttle a few humans there at a time, and before you know it, there'll be a million people there, presumably all scurrying around in their electric Teslas that don't need air or gasoline to run around since the atmosphere on Mars is pretty much void of any breathable oxygen that internal combustion engines need to operate.

"Excluding organic growth, if you could take 100 people at a time, you would need 10,000 trips to get to a million people," Musk says in a recent interview with Ross Andersen at digital magazine Aeon. "But you would also need a lot of cargo to support those people," says Musk. "In fact, your cargo to person ratio is going to be quite high."

Musk further says in the interview that since there doesn't appear to be any noticeable life on any of the other planets we've examined, the days of humans continuing to populate the Earth are most likely quite numbered. Mars,  he says, could help mankind survive.

Earlier this year, Musk announced that SpaceX has made 'progress' toward establishing a small colony on Mars by 2020. He previously has said that the reason he created SpaceX in the first place was to develop the rocket technology to be able to eventually send travelers to Mars. The ticket for the one-way only trip is currently estimated to be around $500,000.