Elon Musk: we must colonise Mars to preserve our species in a third world war

Humans must set up bases in Mars to that it could help preserve human civilization in the event of a third world war, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on Sunday.

 “It’s important to get a self-sustaining base on Mars because it’s far enough away from earth that [in the event of a war] it’s more likely to survive than a moon base,” Musk said at the SXSW conference.


“If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages,” Musk further said.



The 46 year old billionaire entrepreneur also hinted that the company's interplanetary ship could begin test flights by next year.

Musk company spaceX is already working on a 100 metre ship codenamed the BFR (Big Fucking Rocket) that will take humans to Mars. Although, he expressed concerns about requiring huge amount of resources to build a colony on the red planet.