Consider the 2015 Newsweek article: “Star Wars’ Class Wars: Is Mars the Escape Hatch for the 1 Percent?” which claims “the red planet will likely only be for the rich, leaving the poor to suffer as earth’s environment collapses and conflict breaks out.” The only way you could believe this would be if you had no idea how thoroughly, incredibly, impossibly horrible Mars is. The average surface temperature is about -60°C. There’s no breathable air, but there are planetwide dust storms and a layer of toxic dust on the ground. Leaving a 2°C warmer Earth for Mars would be like leaving a messy room so you can live in a toxic waste dump.
The truth is that settling other worlds, in the sense of creating self-sustaining societies somewhere away from Earth, is not only quite unlikely anytime soon, it won’t deliver on the benefits touted by advocates. No vast riches, no new independent nations, no second home for humanity, not even a safety bunker for ultra elites.
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Mars is nowhere near being a Plan B home for humanity anytime soon. Consider a worst-case climate scenario. The oceans have swollen ten meters higher, drowning New York City and Boston. Low-lying countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have been swallowed up whole. Heat waves make parts of the Southern Hemisphere uninhabitable as the planet is ravaged by floods, droughts, wildfires, and massive tropical cyclones. More than half of the world’s species die, coral reefs become bleached skeletons, freshwater sources from snowpack melt away or are fouled by rising seas, tropical diseases make their way into formerly temperate climates. Crops fail, people starve, and violence breaks out as over a billion climate refugees beat against the closed gates of the comparatively livable North.
That planet? Eden compared to Mars or the Moon. That Earth still has a breathable atmosphere, a magnetosphere to protect against radiation, and quite possibly still has McDonald’s breakfast. It’s not a world we would like to inhabit, but it is the one world in the solar system where you can run around naked for ten minutes and still be alive at the end.
Weinersmith, Kelly and Zach. A City on Mars: Can we Settle Space, Should we Settle Space, and have we Really Thought this Through? Penguin Random House, 2023. p. 2, 137-8
Related:
Maher reiterated a long-held criticism, arguing that we’ve got plenty of fires to put out on Earth — so why abandon it in favor of a hostile planet that isn’t currently capable of hosting life?
“How badly would we have to ratfuck Earth before it’s worse than a place that’s 200 below zero with no air and no water with six months to reach it?!” Maher argued.
“Preach it! Preach it!” Tyson replied, egging him on.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/neil-degrasse-tyson-slams-elon-musk-plans-mars-colonization
Has Elon Musk given up on Mars?
“SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon.”
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/has-elon-musk-given-up-on-mars/
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For Mars advocates, however, Musk’s turn is a bitter pill to swallow. There have long been many dreamers who spoke of settling Mars, but only Musk actually built the hardware and financial war chest to make such dreams a reality. And it is true that, in the long-term, Mars offers a more favorable (although still inhospitable) environment for human settlement, with a thin atmosphere, water ice both on the surface and beneath the ground, methane, and more.
But those dreams are now deferred as Musk has bowed to a harsh reality: The Moon may be hard, but it is a lot easier to develop than Mars, which is only accessible every 26 months when the planets align.
Musk clips his Mars settlement ambition, aims for the moon instead
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/08/science/elon-musk-spacex-priorities-moon-intl-hnk
Elon Musk’s ambition to one day settle Mars appears to have taken a back seat for a rather nearer and more achievable goal – sending humans to live on the Moon.
In statement on X on Sunday, the billionaire said his company SpaceX has now shifted its priorities to building “a self-growing city on the Moon,” arguing that it could be achieved in less than a decade, compared with more than 20 years for a similar plan on Mars.
“The overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster,” he said on X Sunday. “It 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).”
It is not immediately clear what Musk meant by a “self-growing city” or whether his plans are in line with a similar lunar plan NASA proposes. CNN has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
Musk said the company remains committed to building a Mars city, and will begin doing so in about five to seven years. As recently as last May, Musk had said SpaceX was working to land its first uncrewed Starship on Mars as soon as late 2026.
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Elon Musk said we’d reach Mars in 2026. Now, he says SpaceX is building a city on the moon.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-shifts-spacex-focus-from-mars-to-moon-2026-2