Elon Musk: Humanity has two options, become multiplanetary or go extinct

Tech entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk on Wednesday discussed his desire to create a self-sustaining human civilization on the planet Mars.

"The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions for life as we know it. Either it’s going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event," Musk said during an interview at AllThingsD's 2013 conference.

He added an extinction event was "pretty obvious from the fossil record, it is a question of time."

After discussing the possibility of a Star Trek-style warpdrive, Musk returned to the topic of Mars.

He noted Mars was the only nearby planet suitable for human life. Though Mars was not ideal environment for humans, the situation on planets such as Venus and Mercury was far worse.

Musk said space explorers could warm up Mars by injecting greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Making Mars habitable for humans would be difficult and costly, but it was still possible.

"It's a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work," he remarked.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

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