By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
World’s richest person, Elon Musk, is planning to relocate to another planet – Mars.
The billionaire, who was crowned the world’s richest person on Thursday, said that he would use his $188 billion net worth towards actualizing his plan to migrate to Mars with some interested one million people by 2050 using SpaceX-built rockets.
Musk, who on Thursday, surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person, is already selling all his possessions for people to know he’s serious about colonizing Mars.
Recall that the billionaire had told Insider that he wanted to have as much capital as possible to fund a future colony on Mars.
“I’m also just trying to make clear that I’m serious about this. And it’s not about personal consumption. Because people will attack me and say, oh, he’s got all these possessions,” Musk said.
“OK, now I don’t have them anymore.”
The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive officer (CEO) said, “In fact, I’ll have basically almost no possessions with a monetary value, apart from the stock in the companies.
“If things are intense at work, I like just sleeping in the factory or the office. And I obviously need a place if my kids are there. So, I’ll just rent a place or something.”
Musk announced last May that he planned to sell “almost all” of his belongings and that he “will own no house.” Since then the entrepreneur has sold off several homes in his real estate portfolio, which was once worth upwards of $100 million.
In 2020, Musk sold several high-dollar pieces of property, including three neighbouring homes in the Bel-Air neighbourhood of Los Angeles and an estate formerly belonging to the actor Gene Wilder.
Musk may very well be parting ways with his California real estate as part of his move to Texas, which has no state income tax. But the billionaire also told Insider the main reason he is accumulating wealth isn’t for material possessions, but to fund a colony on Mars.
“I think it is important for humanity to become a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanet species. And it’s going to take a lot of resources to build a city on Mars,” Musk said. “I want to be able to contribute as much as possible to the city on Mars. That means just a lot of capital.”
In Musk’s eyes, parting ways with his material possessions also signals that he’s committed to going to Mars.
“I’m also just trying to make clear that I’m serious about this. And it’s not about personal consumption,” Musk told Insider.
“Because people will attack me and say, oh, he’s got all these possessions. He’s got all these houses. OK, now I don’t have them anymore.”
As Musk’s net worth eclipsed that of Jeff Bezos thanks to an early morning Tesla stock rally on Thursday, the CEO changed the pinned post on his Twitter profile to a 2018 tweet in which he promised to commit half of his wealth to building a city on Mars “to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves.”
The SpaceX founder has said he plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050 and build a fleet of 1,000 Starships to ferry them there. Musk aims to launch three of the 387-foot rockets SpaceX is developing for deep-space travel each day, according to Insider’s report.
And lest you think a trip to Mars is too pricey for most people, Musk has said that he intends for there to be “loans available for those who don’t have money,” and jobs on the Red Planet for colonists to pay off their debts.
Some critics say Musk’s plans resemble an interplanetary form of indentured servitude.
Who is Elon Musk?
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in June 28, 1971, to a South African father and Canadian mother.
The South African-born American entrepreneur, cofounded the electronic-payment firm, PayPal and formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla.
He displayed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship.
At age 12, he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine.
In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he sought the greater economic opportunities available in the United States.
PayPal And SpaceX
Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics in 1997. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, but he left after only two days because he felt that the Internet had much more potential to change society than work in physics.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer, Compaq, for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later became PayPal, which specialized in transferring money online.
The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity has to become a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make more affordable rockets. Its first two rockets were the Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010), which were designed to cost much less than competing rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost.
SpaceX has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy–Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
SpaceX also developed the Dragon spacecraft, which carries supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020.
Musk sought to reduce the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket made several short flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper.