Elon Musk

And inherently optimistic.

Because there's this amazing sense of wonder about the nature of the universe.

And when you uncover some secrets of the universe, that's amazing.

And you're like, a whole world of understanding has opened up.

I mean, we used to not even know where all the continents were.

You know, it used to be like just the map would be there would be dragons.

All we know is that when they sailed in that direction, they didn't come back.

That's all they knew.

Yeah, I think we want to try to reach new heights as a civilization.

So I think it's fine to go to the moon, but we should go to the moon in order to establish a lunar base, like a lunar research base.

I mean, there are parts of the moon that are perhaps older than parts of Earth.

And we might understand more about the nature of the universe if we had a science base on the moon.

That would be very cool.

And then we obviously want to go beyond the moon to Mars and build a self-sustaining city on Mars.

I do think that...

that there is a fork in the road of human destiny where if we can establish a self-sustaining city on Mars with the key test being if the resupply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason,

does Mars continue to prosper or does it die out?

At the point at which Mars is able to prosper and grow on its own, the probable lifespan of consciousness is dramatically greater because we are no longer dependent on everything going right on Earth.

There's always some possibility of self-annihilation on Earth with the World War III or a super virus or a meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs.

We know from the fossil record that there have been many mass extinction events.