Inventor, entrepreneur, space enthusiast and all-around object of nerd lust Elon Musk sat down with Stephen Colbert to discuss his Grasshopper Rocket, his car company Tesla, SpaceX (which has been sending payloads to the international space station (ISS) and plans to one day send humans to ISS in a sort of space taxi) and the possibility of sending a manned mission to Mars.
Asked by Colbert if he was planning to send people to Mars, Musk replied that he aspires to. Despite being what he calls a “fixer-upper of a planet”, Musk explained he sees two main reasons to send people to Mars. First,
“If humanity is on more than one planet, if we're a multi-planet species…then civilization as we know it, humanity as we know it, the light of consciousness is likely to propagate to the future much further than if we're a single planet species.”
And second,
“It would be the greatest adventure ever. It would be really exciting and inspiring.”
Get your geek on, AFTER THE JUMP…