Elon Musk:

The public tends to respond to, um, precedence and superlatives. And this would be the first life on Mars, the furthest that life's ever traveled. That would get people really excited and therefore increase NASA's budget. So obviously, the financial outcome from such a mission would probably be zero. So anything better than that was on the upside.

So, I went to Russia three times to look at buying a refurbished ICBM……. [laughter] because that was the best deal. [laughter] And I can tell you it was very weird going like 2001, 2002 to the Russian rocket forces and saying, “I'd like to buy two of your biggest rockets, but you can keep the nuke.” [laughter]

After making several trips to Russia, I came to the conclusion that my initial impression was wrong about not enough will to explore and expand beyond Earth and have a Mars base. But I came to the conclusion that was wrong. There's plenty of will, particularly in the United States. Because the United States is a nation of explorers. The people who came here from other parts of the world.

So, after my third trip, I said, okay, well, what we really need to do here is try to solve the space transport problem, and started SpaceX.

Elon Musk:

The public tends to respond to, um, precedence and superlatives. And this would be the first life on Mars, the furthest that life's ever traveled. That would get people really excited and therefore increase NASA's budget. So obviously, the financial outcome from such a mission would probably be zero. So anything better than that was on the upside.

So, I went to Russia three times to look at buying a refurbished ICBM……. [laughter] because that was the best deal. [laughter] And I can tell you it was very weird going like 2001, 2002 to the Russian rocket forces and saying, “I'd like to buy two of your biggest rockets, but you can keep the nuke.” [laughter]

After making several trips to Russia, I came to the conclusion that my initial impression was wrong about not enough will to explore and expand beyond Earth and have a Mars base. But I came to the conclusion that was wrong. There's plenty of will, particularly in the United States. Because the United States is a nation of explorers. The people who came here from other parts of the world.

So, after my third trip, I said, okay, well, what we really need to do here is try to solve the space transport problem, and started SpaceX.