Elon Musk:

It's worth noting that the earth has been around for 4 billion years, and civilization, at least in terms of having writing, has been around for 10 thousand years, and that's being generous. So, it's really somewhat of a tenuous existence that civilization and consciousness has- has been on Earth.

I'm actually fairly optimistic about the future of Earth. I don't want to sort of- people to have the wrong impression that I think we're all about to die. I think things will most likely be okay for a long time on Earth. But- not for sure, but most likely.

But- but even if it's 99% likely, a 1% chance is still worth spending a fair bit of effort to ensure that we have- we've backed up the biosphere. You have planetary redundancy, if you will. [laughter]. I think it's really quite important.

And in order to do that, there's a breakthrough that needs to occur, which is to create a rapidly and completely reusable transport system to Mars. Which is one of those things that's right on the borderline of impossible. That's sort of the thing that we're going to try to achieve there with- with SpaceX.

Elon Musk:

It's worth noting that the earth has been around for 4 billion years, and civilization, at least in terms of having writing, has been around for 10 thousand years, and that's being generous. So, it's really somewhat of a tenuous existence that civilization and consciousness has- has been on Earth.

I'm actually fairly optimistic about the future of Earth. I don't want to sort of- people to have the wrong impression that I think we're all about to die. I think things will most likely be okay for a long time on Earth. But- not for sure, but most likely.

But- but even if it's 99% likely, a 1% chance is still worth spending a fair bit of effort to ensure that we have- we've backed up the biosphere. You have planetary redundancy, if you will. [laughter]. I think it's really quite important.

And in order to do that, there's a breakthrough that needs to occur, which is to create a rapidly and completely reusable transport system to Mars. Which is one of those things that's right on the borderline of impossible. That's sort of the thing that we're going to try to achieve there with- with SpaceX.