Elon Musk has hit the ground running on advancing his mission to colonize Mars, after departing the White House with a strained relationship with the Trump administration.
Musk detailed his company SpaceX’s plan to send humans to the Red Planet at an event on Thursday. The tech billionaire said he plans to launch the first Starship mission with a Tesla Optimus robot aboard, by next year.
‘Launching two years later, we would be sending humans, assuming the first missions are successful,’ said Musk, according to the Daily Mail.
He added that SpaceX’s facility in Texas will produce 1,000 Starships per year, creating the ‘biggest structure in the world’ to bring millions of people to Mars.
Early Thursday, Musk replied to a question on his X (formerly Twitter) platform on whether his long-awaited Mars 2026 presentation was canceled, by saying, ‘Will be posted tomorrow’.
Musk shared the information hours after leaving the White House and stepping back as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Just after midnight on Thursday, Musk wrote on X: ‘As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.’
He added that DOGE’s ‘mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government’.
But Musk, who previously called himself President Donald Trump’s ‘first buddy’, departs with a far rockier relationship with him.
Musk took a swipe at Trump’s domestic policy bill, opining that it will increase the federal deficit.
‘I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,’ he told CBS’ Sunday Morning.
Also this week, Musk admitted that he devoted too much of his time to government, at the expense of his companies.
‘I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,’ he told the tech news website Ars Technica.
‘It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.’
Musk strangely did not show up for his planned address to SpaceX employees on ‘making life multiplanetary’. His address was scheduled for the afternoon and postponed to that night after the Starship Flight 9 launch, only to never happen.
Early this month, Musk divulged a chilling reason that he is pursuing Mars colonization.
‘Mars is life insurance for life collectively,’ he said on Fox News.
‘So, eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the sun.
‘The sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated.’
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has revealed who will Musk’s shoes at DOGE.
‘The DOGE leaders are each and every member of the President’s cabinet,’ she told reporters on Thursday, ‘And the president himself, who is wholeheartedly committed to cutting waste, fraud and abuse from our government.’
