Beyond Earth: Elon Musk’s Bold Vision for Humanity’s Future.
Elon’s mission to colonize Mars is amazingly ambitious and incredibly important.
Making human life multi-planetary by colonizing Mars is much more than a business decision for Musk, even though SpaceX is a thriving business.
The mission of SpaceX is focused on the future of humanity:
“I think it’s important that humanity become a multi-planet species. I think most people would agree that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. That’s really why I started SpaceX.”
In Ashlee Vance’s biography on Musk, Elon reveals that he wishes to establish a Mars colony by 2040, with a population of 80,000.
He’s well on his way.
Elon Musk’s companies employ many tens of thousands, with:
- Neuralink (hundreds),
- Tesla leading (around 120k-140k employees, fluctuating), followed by
- SpaceX (13,000+),
- X/Twitter (significantly reduced, aiming for ~100),
- xAI (1,200+),
- The Boring Company (~200)
Totaling well over 100,000 individuals across his major ventures, with Tesla being the largest employer. (December 2025)
It’s not just the quantity of these teams that matters, it’s the quality. Elon has been able to assemble strong engineering talent partially because his goal is the biggest goal in the world. And big goals help attract skilled talent.
How many will a Mars settlement take?
Likely this will be determined by how well humanoid robots are able to go there and make the living buildings we will need to survive.
A Moon Base alpha is also in the cards. The future is getting more exciting fast.
Mars will be determined by the strength of the technology we amass and the Starships leaving Earth with a blast.
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