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SpaceX’s founder shocked the space world when he said he’s freezing his crusade to begin building a human colony on Mars to instead foster \u201ca self-growing city on the Moon.\u201d Shown here is the ‘Transparent Solar System,’ including the twin planets Earth and Mars, in an illustration produced by the UK’s James Reynolds & Sons around the year 1860. (Photo by SSPL\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
SSPL via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Elon Musk\u2019s bombshell X post that he is freezing his longstanding crusade to begin building a human colony on Mars after his Starship super-capsule is perfected, in favor of fostering \u201ca self-growing city on the Moon,\u201d is a cosmic mistake, says the world\u2019s top scholar on Mars.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s thunderbolt pivot could decimate his role as future leader of independent interplanetary space treks, predicts Robert Zubrin, the aerospace engineer who created the globe\u2019s foremost masterplan to terraform Mars, or generate an Earth-like biosphere around the Red Planet, turning the orb blue as its original oceans and atmosphere are recovered.<\/p>\n
Dr. Zubrin told me in an interview that if Elon Musk genuinely follows through on his pledge to divert future flotillas of Starships to the Moon, SpaceX\u2019s chief designer could be following in the footsteps of his fellow genius Napoleon Bonaparte, whose ill-starred march on desolate Moscow ultimately led to his meteor-like crash.<\/p>\n
Giddy with his past triumphs and power, like Napoleon, Musk might be headed for a pyrrhic lunar victory that defeats his Mars campaign, Zubrin predicts. <\/p>\n
Just as Napoleon Bonaparte’s downfall was sparked by his ill-starred march on desolate Moscow, Elon Musk’s quirky crusade to build a city on the the barren airless Moon might trigger his meteor-like plunge back to Earth, says a top Mars scholar. Shown here is Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the St Bernard Pass, a painting by Jacques-Louis David. (Photo by DeAgostini\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
De Agostini via Getty Images<\/p>\n
SpaceX has incorporated vast portions of the designs and strategies sketched out in Dr. Zubrin\u2019s masterwork book \u201cThe Case for Mars<\/a>,\u201d on reengineering Mars to host a new branch of civilization, into its grand schemes for Mars. <\/p>\n Zubrin\u2019s opus spells out how to produce methane and oxygen rocket propellants on the surface of Mars while lofting gigantic mirrors into orbit to melt its reservoirs of frozen H20 and warm the entire planet. Elon Musk designed his methane-burning Starship spacecraft, and Mars missions architecture, around The Case for Mars, including the planned deployment of AI-enhanced robots to begin assembling the first human outposts.<\/p>\n Mars savant Robert Zubrin and Mars colonization neophyte Elon Musk first met back in 2001, when Musk, a new convert to the cause of transforming Mars, donated $100,000 to the Mars Society founded by Zubrin as a globe-spanning design studio to map out hyper-tech settlements to be constructed across the orange-red Martian sandhills. <\/p>\n Musk was briefly appointed to the Martian studio-think tank\u2019s <\/a>board of directors – and it was at a Mars Society convention, in the summer of 2001, that he first sketched out his dream of rocketing explorers to Mars.<\/p>\n \u201cOf all the things that we can do that are important \u2013 creating a human civilization on Mars<\/a> and helping humans go from being a one planet species to multi-planet species is very important,\u201d he told the Mars gathering, after being introduced by Zubrin. <\/p>\n \u201cA million years from now, when most of what we see is forgotten, the point at which humans were no longer limited to one planet will be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Zubrin’s masterwork book “The Case for Mars” sketches out how to launch colossal mirrors into orbit around Mars to melt its polar ice caps and restore its ancient oceans. Shown here is a computer-generated image of Mars with its resurrected seas. (Photo by: Universal History Archive\/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n A year later, Musk would found SpaceX, and change the future of spaceflight and the potential for a twin-planet civilization.<\/p>\n Since then, Dr. Zubrin, who designed an early prototype of NASA\u2019s Space Launch System super-rocket, has acted as a mentor to Elon Musk, heralding his space-tech breakthroughs with the remarkable reusable Falcon 9 booster, and the futuristic Starship, but also providing negative feedback on diversions like the suspended flight plans for Mars. <\/p>\n Aerospace wizard Robert Zubrin designed an early prototype of the Space Launch System, the only rocket on the planet now capable of lofting humans directly to the Moon. (Photo by Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n When SpaceX\u2019s commander shocked the space world with his new campaign to create a city on the lifeless Moon, Zubrin responded with twin open letters to Musk, in the form of dual Op-Eds published in the British-American magazine UnHerd<\/a> and the Australian publication Quillette<\/a>, blasting the abandonment of Mars. <\/p>\n With only minuscule deposits of water and oxygen, and devoid of any atmosphere to protect astronauts from super-speed cosmic rays and meteors, Dr. Zubrin says, it is inconceivable, deploying even the most advanced technologies of this century, to create an ever-expanding metropolis around the craters and deserts of the Moon.<\/p>\n In contrast, he told me during our interview, Mars is rich with all of the elements needed to develop a second foundation for human civilization, with continent-size deposits of water beneath the Martian dunes, reservoirs of frozen H2O above both poles, oxygen that can be captured from the water and from the carbon dioxide atmosphere, and the potential to build experimental Gardens of Eden beneath vast crystalline geodesic domes filled with photosynthetic life. <\/p>\n Since SpaceX started testing prototypes of its Starship, the most technologically advanced spacecraft ever designed on Earth, its founder has been sketching out details of his blueprints to rocket one million adventure-seeking nomads to Mars by the year 2050 to form the first Martian cosmopolis.<\/p>\n Then, out of the blue, Musk told his 200 million followers on the platform X recently that he now aims to construct his celestial city around the frigid airless impact craters of the Moon, where the sun\u2019s rays disappear for two weeks at a time, and temperatures can dip to \u2013200\u00b0 Celsius.<\/p>\n \u201cSpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon<\/a>, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,\u201d Musk scribbled across X, astounding legions of his Mars acolytes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time).\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThis means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.”<\/p>\n Musk never explained why these differing flight times for trips to the Moon and for Mars, which have existed for aeons, had suddenly changed his mission goals, but he added: \u201cThe overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.\u201d<\/p>\n But Dr. Zubrin says the barren Moon could not be transformed into an independent sanctuary for civilization, at least for centuries into the future.<\/p>\n And Musk himself has in the past dismissed the potential for the black and silver orb to serve as a haven for humanity if the home planet encountered some cosmic catastrophe. <\/p>\n Since Russia\u2019s ambassador to the U.S. personally threatened him that if Ukrainian resistance fighters used his Starlink navigation technology to launch attacks on Kremlin commandos, Moscow could respond with tactical nuclear weapons, the head of SpaceX has been speeding up his race to develop fleets of Starship arks to shuttle part of humanity to an off-world asylum on Mars.<\/p>\n The creator of SpaceX – the globe\u2019s first independent space superpower – presented his vision of Mars as a celestial sanctuary<\/a> during a fantastical overview he outlined at his Starbase launch center, the massive rocket skunkworks he\u2019s expanding, at bullet-speed, just off the turquoise seas of the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n Musk said that as the specter of mushroom clouds darkens the fate of the Earth, \u201cThere\u2019s a high urgency to making life multi-planetary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe overarching goal of the company is to extend life sustainably to another planet – Mars is the only option really – and to do that ideally before World War III.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to just get Mars to be a self-sustaining civilization as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Speedily building an oasis for humans on Mars is all-important, Musk said, before \u201cthere\u2019s something that takes out Earth – like let’s say there’s a World War III – global thermonuclear warfare<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n An advanced colony on the Moon could not protect humanity\u2019s future, he forecast, because a nuclear power launching its intercontinental ballistic missiles would \u201cprobably throw a few nukes at the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s way harder to shoot Mars with nuclear,\u201d he predicted. \u201cMars would see it coming and probably have some time to stop the inbound missiles.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk has proposed creating the first utopian city-state on Mars within 20 years, via flotillas of massive Starship lifeboats that depart Earth every two years, when the planets are optimally aligned. Each Starship could accommodate 100 settlers, and 10,000 flights would foster a flourishing SpaceX cosmopolis of one million first-generation Martians.<\/p>\n Echoing Dr. Zubrin\u2019s blueprints to reanimate Mars as a waterworld, Musk added: \u201cWe can warm up Mars and we can densify the atmosphere.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThere would be a liquid ocean on about 40 percent of the surface so we could make it an Earth-like planet long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n In a sequel talk last summer, Musk told the world he aims to transfigure Mars into an expanding haven for life forms that now flourish across the globe.<\/p>\n Musk said one goal in his quest to redesign and occupy the Red Planet is to transplant \u201clife as we know it\u201d to a mirror-world sanctuary.<\/p>\n In the future, as SpaceX races to build colossal fleets of Starship arks, they would be deployed to shuttle botanical and zoological gardens between the planets, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will be landing ships on Mars in the future,\u201d Musk said, \u201cbuilding greenhouses and life on Mars, and ensuring the long term survival of life as we know it<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Elon Musk pledged to begin shuttling a world of life forms from Earth to Mars, creating a mirror sanctuary for new Gardens of Eden (Photo by Mitterbauer\/ullstein bild via Getty Images)<\/p>\n ullstein bild via Getty Images<\/p>\n The new vow to speed the globe\u2019s flora and fauna to a second-world citadel represented a remarkable philanthropic expansion of Musk\u2019s overarching Mars missions.<\/p>\n But now this quest to airlift humans and giraffes, parrots and dolphins to a new Elysium on another world is in a state of suspended animation.<\/p>\n If the creator of the Starship casts away his Mars voyages, Zubrin says, he would be betraying not only his myriad Mars followers, but also his own innermost raison d\u2019\u00eatre.<\/p>\n Having known Musk for a quarter-century now, Dr. Zubrin says he is driven by a burning passion for what the Greek philosophers of Homer\u2019s era called \u201ckleos,\u201d or achieving immortal glory by performing heroic deeds that change the world.<\/p>\n Since the beginning of the new millennium, Musk strove to present an eternal gift to humanity by making it interplanetary. <\/p>\n But now, perhaps entranced by Moon Sirens promising a lunar gold rush, or by the prospect of becoming the planet\u2019s first trillionaire with the launch of the SpaceX IPO, the great SpaceX navigator seems to have lost his way in the celestial sphere.<\/p>\n While NASA has already awarded SpaceX twin contracts, paying out $4 billion-plus, to shuttle its astronauts to the Moon\u2019s surface<\/a>, and the space agency has proposed establishing a small human base on Earth\u2019s ancient satellite, NASA has never offered funding to construct a lunar cosmopolis. That means SpaceX itself would have to finance this astronomically priced endeavor. <\/p>\n If Elon Musk jettisons his masterplan to colonize Mars, Dr. Zubrin predicts, another dynamic torchbearer in the crusade to create a dual-world spacefaring civilization will emerge.<\/p>\n While Zubrin will likely be immortalized in the space chronicles of the future as the master architect of designs to transform Mars into a fantastical New World for human explorers across the third millennium, Elon Musk might be relegated to a footnote in these epics, described as a sensational spacecraft creator who almost launched the first human discoverers to Mars.<\/p>\n If Elon Musk and SpaceX drop out of the crusade to rocket spacefarers to Mars, new flotillas of Starship-class super-capsules will emerge to spearhead the invasion of Mars. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA \/ AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n If that future emerges, Zubrin says, another inventor will begin crafting Starship-class capsules to spearhead the invasion of Mars.<\/p>\n Could billionaire space pilot Jared Isaacman, the independent aeronaut who now heads NASA, become one of the new lodestars in the quest to colonize Mars?<\/p>\n Aerospace scholar Isaacman, who is also an incredible philanthropist, told me in an earlier interview that the experimental spacesuits and futuristic helmets, and the specially adapted capsule that he navigated across two sensational orbital missions, were all aimed at testing out the space technologies that millions of spacefarers could depend on in odysseys to Mars in times ahead<\/a>.<\/p>\n