World's richest man Elon Musk talks about ‘self-sustaining city’ on Mars, explains how humans will sustain

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and a man with many visions, have a deep desire to transport billions of humans to Mars, and has now opened up about this idea and how will this happen. The world’s richest man was talking about life on Mars on the podcast, ‘Verdict Podcast’ with Ted Cruz. He talked about how an entire industry base of Earth can be recreated on Mars. He emphasised on what it takes to make life work on Mars.

'Mars' hostile environment' challenge for industries 

“You need to recreate the entire base of industry of Earth [on Mars],” he advised. “We're here at the top of a massive pyramid of industry that starts with mining a vast array of materials,” he added, explaining the challenges of building industrial cities on Mars. He further explained about the complicated steps that are taken to build even the smallest thing on earth and with such a “hostile environment” on Mars, it would be quite impossible.   

ELON: WE’LL NEED TO RECREATE OUR ENTIRE EARTH INDUSTRY ON MARS

“You need to recreate the entire base of industry of Earth [on Mars].

We're here at the top of a massive pyramid of industry that starts with mining a vast array of materials.

Those materials are going through… https://t.co/DGFNXDimkh pic.twitter.com/wVsyKTwVON

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 20, 2025

“Those materials are going through hundreds of steps of refinement.  We grow food, obviously. We grow trees.  We make things out of the trees,” he said. “You've got to build all that on Mars, a hostile environment. It sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near the equator on Mars—meaning it's quite cold,” he added, explaining the adverse situation for life on Mars.  

Elon Musk explains how humans would sustain on Mars  

Talking about how humans can get life like situation on Mars, the SpaceX founder said that in the starting a “life support habitation module” would be needed. "You can't just live outdoors. You can't breathe the air," He added. He then explained that with a structure like "glass dome" this can be made possible. 

"I have a philosophy of curiosity. I want to find out the nature of the universe. And in order to do that, we have to travel to other planets, see other star systems, maybe other galaxies, find other alien civilizations or perhaps the remnants of alien civilizations. We must gain a better understanding of where the universe is going, from where did we come from, and what questions do we not yet know to ask about the universe," Musk further said. 

The billionaire was asked about his landing on Mars if humans are able to create situation to land on the red planet in 2029, Musk said, "The important thing is we build a self-sustaining city on Mars, as quickly as possible. The key threshold is when that city can continue to prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming.”