Fresh from his SpaceX company’s rescue of astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, inventor Elon Musk is already looking at building a sustainable city of 1 million people on Mars by 2050, or before “civilization dies.”
“I think the soonest would be 2029” when man lands on Mars, according to Musk.
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Then, over two decades of moving people and supplies to the red planet, a city could arise. “It can be done in 20 years,” Musk said.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder, now President Donald Trump’s chief of the Department of Government Efficiency, laid out his vision during a remarkable roundtable chat with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ben Ferguson for their podcast The Verdict.
In the second part of their discussion released Wednesday, Cruz and Ferguson quizzed Musk about his passion for going to Mars and his vision of a big city.
“You’re going to need on the order of a million people, maybe a million tons of cargo,” said Musk, who added the project should be fast-tracked just in case civilization or Earth are destroyed.
“The important thing is that we build a self-sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper, even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming at that point, even if something would happen on Earth. It might not be World War III — civilization could die with a bang or a whimper,” he told Cruz.
“So you obviously need Mars to become self-sustaining and be able to grow by itself before the resupply ships from Earth stop coming. That is the critical civilizational threshold beyond which the probable lifespan of civilization is much greater,” Musk said.
His vision is for a glass-domed city where food and trees are grown, and manufacturing is conducted. “We grow food, obviously, we grow trees. We make things out of the trees. There’s, you know, you’ve got to build all that on Mars. And Mars is a hostile environment,” Musk explained.
He even has a location picked out, but said it could change depending on what future astronauts find on Mars.
Congratulations to the @SpaceX and @NASA teams for another safe astronaut return!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2025
Thank you to @POTUS for prioritizing this mission! https://t.co/KknFDbh59s
“I don’t think we’re going to find aliens,” he said, adding, “We may find the ruins of a long, dead alien civilization. That’s possible, and we may find subterranean microbial life. That’s possible.”
While the first part of their hourlong discussion focused on Musk’s DOGE and other Washington activities, the second part turned to Musk’s background, including his inventive business career and his start with SpaceX.
He said that after making millions selling one of his businesses, he planned to spend heavily to push NASA back into space exploration and eventually a trip to Mars, which he has been focused on for years.
But he realized that the U.S. lacked the rocket power to return to the moon, so he tried to buy intercontinental ballistic missiles from Russia, which the country was selling after agreeing during Reagan-era arms negotiations to destroy.
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That plan, however, died when Russia kept doubling the price, and he eventually moved to start SpaceX.
“It’s hard to believe that it’s all real,” Musk said.