The Making of Elon Musk | E4: The Great Trek

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Making of Musk: Understood

Episode 4: The Great Trek

Podcast: The Making of Musk: Understood (CBC)
Date: October 28, 2025
Duration (approx.): 42 minutes
Theme: The episode traces Elon Musk’s obsessive push for Martian colonization, interweaving the dream of human expansion, the romantic legacy of space, science fiction’s influence, and the hard scientific and ethical reality checks from critics and collaborators. Along the way, it explores Musk’s drive, leadership style, workplace culture, and the chasm between dream and feasibility.

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Episode Overview

The fourth episode of The Making of Musk delves deep into Elon Musk’s pursuit to make humanity a multi-planetary species, focusing on his fixation with Mars as both a personal legacy project and global salvation narrative. Drawing from interviews, archival clips, and first-hand accounts, the episode unpacks the early Mars movement with Robert Zubrin, Musk’s entry into and eventual dominance of the private space race, the rollercoaster of SpaceX’s early years, and the schism between aspiration and reality regarding plans for Martian colonization. Critiques from engineers and scientists draw sharp lines around Musk’s vision, highlighting how personal ambition, cultural narratives, and technical roadblocks shape, constrain, and sometimes warp this so-called “Great Trek.”

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins of the Mars Dream

• [01:03–04:23] Robert Zubrin, physicist and Mars Society founder, sets the historical context: Mars settlement is positioned as a civilizational leap.
• Zubrin’s drive: Inspired by the need to expand humanity, he sees Mars as “the most important thing that will be done in this century” (05:34).
• Historical analogy: Zubrin likens colonizing Mars to Columbus’s voyage—an event whose significance will eclipse contemporary headlines, with the bold prediction:

  "500 years from now ... they will remember the people who found the first human settlements on Mars." (06:36)

2. Musk’s Entry and Ambition

• [03:34–04:31] Musk, flush with money post-PayPal and wrestling with personal loss, donates generously to Mars Society but soon wants to lead his own venture:

  “I’m not the kind of person that wants to be part of somebody else’s deal. I gotta lead my own show.” – Elon Musk, relayed by Zubrin (04:23)

• [08:26–11:10] Musk’s disillusionment with stalled space progress pushes him into action:

  "We were supposed to have a base on the moon. We were supposed to send people to Mars and that stuff just… it just didn’t happen." – Elon Musk (09:15)

• Impatient and hands-on: Musk's style: flying to Russia to buy ICBMs, teaching himself aerospace engineering, and actively building SpaceX (10:06–12:07).

3. SpaceX: Struggle, Failure, and Breakthrough

• [12:35–17:57] Early Falcon 1 launches fail—matching Zubrin’s cautions about the inevitability of setbacks.
• Musk faces near ruin:

  “If this fails, then I’m out.” – Musk before the fourth Falcon 1 attempt (14:27)

• Breakthrough after adversity:

  “But then he said, I’m not quitting. We’re going to do it again.” – Zubrin, after three failures (16:33)

• Disneyland and the Fourth Attempt: Musk, burned out, spends launch day at Disneyland with his children; SpaceX finally succeeds on the fourth attempt (17:43–17:57).

4. Musk’s Success and Unique Drive

• [18:22–19:00] Musk leaves competitors behind through a mix of resources, relentless work, and resilience:

  “That was the difference between Musk and these other guys. He was willing to actually put hard work into it, not just some spare change. And the other thing is that he was tough. Tough enough to take some hits.” – Robert Zubrin (18:43)

5. Vision: Mars as Humanity’s Life Insurance

• [21:07–27:03] Musk’s narrative: Mars is both a “life insurance plan” for humanity and the logical next step in civilization—a trajectory inspired by science fiction.
• Cultural Influence: Childhood immersed in sci-fi led to ambitions mirroring those in the genre, especially Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy:

  “Musk even calls his proposed city on Mars Terminus.” – Zubrin (24:43) “Each launch is about learning more and more about what’s needed to make life multi planetary.” – Elon Musk (25:28)

• Open for all—at least in theory:

  "Ideally, we can take anyone who wants to go to Mars. We can take to Mars." – Elon Musk (25:57)

6. Workplace Culture and Moral Limits at SpaceX

• [27:03–31:29] Early SpaceX engineers, like Tom Moline, describe a toxic “boss cop” culture echoing Musk’s personal style—marked by off-color humor and intimidation, and an ideology where dissent is cast as betrayal of the cosmic mission.
• Handling of harassment allegations:

  “This distracts from our ability to go to Mars as quickly as possible. I’m very disappointed in you.” – Gwynne Shotwell, via Tom Moline (30:30)

• Workplace dissent is quashed, and critics are swiftly fired.

7. Hard Reality: Scientific Skepticism and Limits of Mars Colonization

• [31:29–36:56] Journalist/astrophysicist Adam Becker and the scientific community are deeply skeptical of Musk’s Martian plans.
• Technical barriers:

  “Gravity is too low, the radiation levels are too high, there is no air and the dirt is made of poison.” – Adam Becker (32:41) “Mars would make Antarctica look like Tahiti.” – Adam Becker (32:20)

• Human cost and practicality: The reality is “nasty, brutish, and short … probably unsustainable” (35:32). Mars is not a second Earth.
• Musk’s critics see his vision as hubristic, a function of “arrogant” belief in technology over biology or ethics (35:55–36:56).

8. Incrementalism vs. Grandiose Plans

• [39:04–39:37] Zubrin, the original Mars advocate, thinks Musk’s plan to land a million people at once is “bat guano crazy.”

  “A Mars colony has to be built up organically…” – Zubrin (39:04)

9. The Legacy Question and Final Reflections

• [41:05–41:52] Despite all his ambitions, Musk himself has never been to space, even as tourists and celebrities have launched suborbitally.
• Musk’s own words on death:

  “To be clear, I don’t want to die on Mars. I mean, we’re all going to die someday. And if you’re going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars?” – Elon Musk (41:09)

• Final critique: The narrator argues Musk’s desire for legacy, combined with colonialist and techno-libertarian attitudes, is at odds with physics, biology, and democracy, and may even be rooted in unresolved issues from his South African upbringing.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ambition and legacy:
  “I want to do something really, really important.” – Elon Musk, paraphrased by Zubrin (04:45)

• On Martian history:
  “Only history buffs will know who Donald Trump was ... But they will remember the people who found the first human settlements on Mars.” – Robert Zubrin (07:00)

• On the risks of rocket science:
  “Your design probably doesn’t have any flaws, but these things are very complicated and very difficult to get right.” – Zubrin, to Musk (13:20)

• On workplace culture at SpaceX:
  “That is kind of an ongoing, consistent, toxic culture that existed within the company. And that all comes, like, directly from Elon Musk.” – Tom Moline (28:03)

• On the dream vs. reality of Mars:
  “The air pressure on Mars is so low that the saliva would boil off your tongue as you die.” – Adam Becker (33:00)

• On the possibility of Mars life:
  “We do not know whether it is possible to ... have a baby on Mars.” – Adam Becker (34:28)

• On incrementalism:
  “You don’t just land a million people on Mars like Normandy Beach ... Mars will be settled that way over time, but not this other thing.” – Zubrin (39:04)

• On legacy and death:
  “To be clear, I don’t want to die on Mars ... but if you’re going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars?” – Elon Musk (41:09) “But it’s not some kind of Mars death wish. And if I do die on Mars, I just don’t want it to be on impact.” – Elon Musk (41:52)

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Essential Timestamps

• 01:03–04:23: Zubrin explains the early Mars Society and Musk’s first encounter with space advocacy
• 08:26–09:41: Musk’s disappointment with space progress
• 10:06–12:07: Early SpaceX and Musk’s learning curve
• 12:35–17:57: The failures and ultimate success of Falcon 1
• 27:03–31:29: SpaceX workplace culture and internal dissent
• 31:29–36:56: Technical and ethical skepticism from Adam Becker
• 39:04–39:37: Zubrin’s critique of Musk’s “million colonist” vision
• 41:05–41:52: Musk on dying on Mars; legacy questions

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Tone & Style

The tone is journalistic, skeptical, and at times wry, especially when narrators and critics unpack Musk’s outsized personality, ambition, and workplace tactics. There is a counterbalance of wonder at the scale of vision with sober documentation of the limitations and personal consequences of such pursuits.

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Recommended for Listeners Who:

• Are fascinated (or confounded) by Elon Musk and the private space race
• Value rigorous discussion of how technological utopianism collides with scientific reality
• Appreciate explorations of the cultural psychology behind Silicon Valley ambitions and legacy
• Want an insider/outsider look at tech company culture and the costs of “mission at all costs” ideology

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For more episodes and topics from the Understood podcast, visit cbc.ca/podcasts.

Transcript

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[Robert Zubrin]

This is a CBC podcast.

[Elon Musk]

Hello.

[Robert Zubrin]

Okay, so first slide. Okay. I'm Bob Zubrin. I'm an astronautical engineer. And what I'm going to talk about today is about how I think we can get people to Mars either within 10 years from now or 10 years from whenever anybody turns on the money.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is Robert Zubrin addressing the 15th annual meeting of the Doctors for Disaster preparedness in California, June 1997. Zubrin's first book, the Case for Mars the Plan to Settle the Red Planet and why We Must, was published the year before. It would be his first of many books on why he thought humanity needed to travel beyond Earth and colonize the solar system. And it thrust the relatively unknown engineer into the spotlight. Zubrin's work on everything from spacecraft designs to the ethics of terraforming developed a a loose network that became known as the Mars Underground.

[Robert Zubrin]

I and some other people who were co thinkers in terms of the desirability or necessity of the human Mars exploration decided to found a Mars Society to see if we could pull together all the people who wanted to make this happen.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

For Zubrin's group, getting to Mars wasn't a fanciful idea limited to science fiction. It was a workable goal that they were planning and advocating for, educating the public and lobbying policymakers. They started preparing by building training centers designed to simulate the brutal conditions of Mars. In 2000, the group now known as the Mars Society built their first training center on Devon island in the Canadian Arctic. They raised a tricolor Martian flag, red, green, blue, that a NASA engineer designed.

[Robert Zubrin]

In 2001, we decided we'd build a second station in the American desert. So we needed to raise money.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

But where would they find a bunch of space curious people with money to burn.

[Robert Zubrin]

We had a fundraiser in Silicon Valley for a venue.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

They found a wealthy Mars Society member with a nice big house and they began selling tickets.

[Robert Zubrin]

$500 a plate, and one person sends in $5,000. And we said, what's this? It's $5,000. Just $500 a plate. Who is it? Elon Musk. Never heard of him. So we did a little research and we discovered that he was one of the top people at PayPal, which we had heard of.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Zubrin was intrigued. He invited Musk for coffee at the fundraiser. Zubrin sat Musk next to director James Cameron at the dinner table, a plum position. Before the night was over, Musk had pledged $100,000 and secured a seat on the Mars Society board. But if there's one constant with Musk, it's that he doesn't like to defer to others.

[Robert Zubrin]

After a while he said to me, look, I'm not the kind of person that wants to be part of somebody else's deal. I gotta lead my own show.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk was 31 years old. It was a pivotal moment for him personally and professionally. He just made a nine figure fortune from the sale of PayPal and tragically lost his first son.

[Robert Zubrin]

At this point he's worth like $180 million. So you know, he already has all the money he could ever need for his own personal use, to buy airplanes, yachts, anything, say nothing of groceries. And so he's what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I want to do something really, really important.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

The man who once told his boss that he thought of himself as Alexander the Great was looking for something to match his ambitions. Something that shapes the future on a global scale. He's thinking about solar energy and electric cars, batteries, climate change. But for Zubrin, the question of what was most important, what really mattered to the future of humanity, had an obvious answer.

[Robert Zubrin]

This is perhaps the most important thing that will be done in this century. That is the expansion of humanity to become a multi planet space faring species.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Mars. Whoever made it happen would become immortal, haloed in glory.

[Robert Zubrin]

I believe that this time will be remembered by future ages as when we first set sail for other worlds. Just like any American, and I presume any Canadian, if you ask them what happened in the year 1492, they will tell you that that is when Columbus sailed. And of course that is true, but that's hardly the that happened in the year 1492. In 1492, England and France signed a peace treaty. Does anybody know about that? Today, in 1492, the Borgias took over the Papacy. A few people might know about that. Lorenzo de Medici died in 1492. If there had been big time newspapers in 1492, those would have been the headlines. Not Italian Weaver's son goes off in some ships and discovers some, you know, island somewhere. Yet that is what we remember. And I believe that 500 years from now, only history buffs will know who Donald Trump was. I mean, really. But they will remember the people who found the first human settlements on Mars.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

For Musk, Mars isn't just an engineering project. It's a way to extend the light of consciousness, as he would eventually describe it. A pioneering effort of Columbian proportions for the human species. Mars is supposed to be a life insurance policy, the place to plant our flag and start the difficult work of colonization before an inevitable cataclysm consumes Earth. It's about the future of humanity, Musk insists, but it's also very much about Musk himself and the legacy he leaves behind. This is understood the making of Musk. Episode 4 the Great Trek When Musk found the Mars Society, he was considering his life's next chapter. The Internet was great, but the promise of technology he thought, was far grander. Humanity wasn't living up to that promise.

[Elon Musk]

I always thought that we would make much more progress in space, and it just didn't happen.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is Musk in 2013. He's speaking on stage at an event for the Computer History Museum hosted by journalist Alison Van Digelen. Like some of his peers, he felt impatient that the promised techno utopian future, the one his grandfather Joshua Haldeman had envisioned decades before, still hadn't yet arrived. One quote, often attributed to Musk's colleague Peter Thiel, captured the prevailing sentiment. We were promised flying cars. We got 140 characters when we went to the moon.

[Elon Musk]

We were supposed to have a base on the moon. We were supposed to send people to Mars and that stuff just. It just didn't happen.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

How could he activate people? How could he inspire them with the kind of cosmological faith he felt? He pictured an image, a greenhouse on the surface of the red planet.

[Elon Musk]

I thought that would get people excited.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

So you literally imagined a photograph inspiring a new generation.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, you gotta sort of imagine the money shot, if you will.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk had taken up Robert Zubrin's ideas, donated to the Mars Society, and snagged a seat on the organization's board. They shared the same general goal, but increasingly differed about how to get there. Musk, as always, was in a hurry and he was committed.

[Elon Musk]

I spent several months on this actually and went to Russia three times to try to negotiate purchase of two Russian ICBMs.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Committed enough to go bargain hunting in post Soviet Russia, thinking he might buy an old missile or two. He came away empty handed, perhaps for the best.

[Tom Moline]

And did they think you had evil intent?

[Elon Musk]

No, they just thought I was crazy.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

They weren't the only ones who thought so.

[Robert Zubrin]

A number of us said, well there goes another one that is, there goes another zillionaire who thinks he's going to open up the space frontier.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Within months of his Russia Visit, Musk founded SpaceX. He felt there was an opportunity to bring down the costs of rockets and make them reusable. And beyond that, the dream of Mars. Musk's friends at the Mars Society were skeptical. Zubrin had seen it all before. Some Trekkie tech founder makes some serious.

[Robert Zubrin]

Money and then some visionary engineer approaches him and says look here, I got the plan a silver bullet. And the billionair would throw $50 million or something of play money at the visionary and they'd start work. And then when he discovered that it really wasn't going to be as easy as they had thought, they would quit. But it isn't what happened?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Like any Musk venture, SpaceX moved fast and Musk was at the center of it. Not simply bankrolling someone else's idea. Musk threw himself completely into this world. In 2001, when Zubrin first met Musk, the young entrepreneur impressed him. But it was clear that Musk was no aerospace expert. By 2004, when Zubrin visited Musk at SpaceX's office, things had changed.

[Robert Zubrin]

And it was apparent that by that time he had educated himself. He knew a lot about about aerospace engineering, not just the business side. He had cracked the books. He had self educated himself, created the equivalent of a graduate degree in astronautical engineering, which was very impressive. He still however, hadn't gotten the hardest lesson, which was risk.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

SpaceX still had a long way to go with their Falcon 1 design. They were trying to be the first private company to put a payload into Earth orbit. Zubrin warned Musk, there will be failures and they'll be painful.

[Robert Zubrin]

I said to him, look, okay, you got to be ready to do at least three launches because the first two are definitely going to fail. And he says to me, why? Why tell me what the flaw is in my design.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk was SpaceX's CEO and chief engineer. His money helped fund the company, the Falcon 1 project, was his baby and like all of Musk's many children, a projection of his ego.

[Robert Zubrin]

I don't know what the flaw is in your design. Your design probably doesn't have any flaws, but these things are very complicated and very difficult to get right.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Zubrin's instinct, his caution, ended up being correct.

[Elon Musk]

21012.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

In March 2006, SpaceX launched the Falcon 1 for the first time.

[Elon Musk]

8 +9 +10.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is the LC on the Countdown Net.

[Elon Musk]

Falcon 1 is airborne at this time.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

A fuel leak caused an engine fire and 41 seconds after takeoff, the rocket crashed into the ocean. A year later, they went again.

[Elon Musk]

Coming up on stage separation.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

The first stage was a success. The stages are separated. The second stage shut down early and the rocket's satellite payload didn't make it into orbit.

[Robert Zubrin]

So then I visited him in 2007 and by now he's a little bit chastened and he says, okay, I'm good for one more try and if this fails, then I'm out.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk's money was running out.

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T + 1/40. The vehicle is headed downrange with a velocity of 1050 meters per second and an altitude of 35 kilometers.

[Robert Zubrin]

Well, guess what? It did fail.

[Adam Becker]

We are hearing from the launch control center that there has been an anomaly on the vehicle.

[Robert Zubrin]

We don't have any information about what.

[Adam Becker]

That anomaly is at this time.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

On the third launch, the rocket's first stage hit the second stage, causing another explosive failure.

[Robert Zubrin]

Foreign.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

SpaceX and Musk were at an all time low.

[Adam Becker]

In 2008. The rocket company is not going well.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

You've had three failures.

[Robert Zubrin]

Great.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

The car company is hemorrhaging money.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Robert Zubrin]

And the American economy has tanked in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

[Elon Musk]

Right.

[Adam Becker]

What was that year like for you?

[Elon Musk]

And I'm getting divorced, by the way. Add to that, that was, that was definitely the worst year of my life.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And Musk wasn't the only one having a tough time. Inside SpaceX, the mood was bleak. Musk biographer Ashley Vance writes about employees openly weeping. Others described a kind of exhaustion that went beyond long hours. As if 6 years of 70 or 80 hour weeks fighting uphill against impossible odds had finally taken their toll. People talked about it feeling like the company had reached the end of the road. Drained, worn down, wondering if there was any point in climbing further up this mountain, would they ever get there.

[Robert Zubrin]

But then he said, I'm not quitting. We're going to do it again.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

On the morning of the Launch. Musk was in LA, planning to watch from the command van at SpaceX headquarters. Clearly jittery, feeling the pressure, his brother Kimble had an idea. Why don't we head to Disneyland with the kids? Take your mind off things. So that's what they did. Instead of huddling over dashboards and performing frantic last minute checks. The man gambling his fortune on one last moonshot was standing in hour long queues with tourists in mickey ears. They even rode Space Mountain, a mock space flight complete with neon stars and roller coaster plunger. The manufactured adrenaline hit seemed to do the trick. After all, it was nothing compared to what he was about to experience. Musk walked up to Mission Control with just moments to spare before the 4pm launch window opened.

[Elon Musk]

Second stage approaching SECO and that would.

[Adam Becker]

Be a nominal SECO.

[Robert Zubrin]

SECO's in third. And the fourth time is when it succeeded.

[Elon Musk]

My mind is kind of frazzled, so it's kind of hard for me to say anything but man, definitely this is one of the greatest days of my life. And I think probably for most people.

[Robert Zubrin]

Here it was a remarkable achievement. He was the first of any private funded venture that actually reached orbit.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

If this was a billionaire's vanity project, it ended up being an uncommonly successful one. Compared to Richard Branson's failed space tourism company Virgin Galactic or Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is still struggling after 20 years, Musk had soared ahead in the private space race.

[Elon Musk]

Why?

[Robert Zubrin]

That was the difference between Musk and these other guys. He was willing to actually put hard work into it, not just some spare change. And the other thing is that he was tough. Tough enough to take some hits.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk also had great timing. Cuts to NASA's budget and the retirement of the space shuttle program left an opening for private contractors to compete to launch rockets, put satellites into orbit and ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Billions of dollars were at stake from that successful launch in 2008. It would take just a decade for Musk to turn SpaceX into one of the world's most valuable privately held companies and the chief space launch partner for the US government, which it remains to to this day. SpaceX has undoubtedly made tantalizing jumps forward in technology and it has its sights set on refuelable rockets and a base on the moon. But these incredible leaps are just mile markers on a much longer journey.

[Tom Moline]

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[Adam Becker]

Narvel Morso is one of the most famous indigenous artists ever. Looking at his paintings, he it's easy to see why colors are intense.

[Robert Zubrin]

Color is medicine.

[Adam Becker]

But look a little closer and you'll see something else. Fakes we believe it's the world's biggest art fraud. There are thousands of fake Norval Morisot paintings beneath some of these forgeries, assaults, abuse, and even an unsolved murder.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

I want my paint back.

[Elon Musk]

I know you killed that boy.

[Adam Becker]

Forged available now wherever you get your podcasts.

[Elon Musk]

Next Step Mars Mission Mars.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Humanity has been dreaming of Mars for over a century in endless pulpy adventures. A princess and Mars in 1912, Flash Gordon in the 30s. B movies in the mid century. Mars became a blank space to project human ambition and fantasy. But it also became a cipher to represent our anxieties about what was happening here on Earth. Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles imagine settlers taming a new frontier escaping the nuclear destruction of Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy mapped out the politics of colonization. The film Total Recall, based on a Philip K. Dick short story, showed a Mars mining colony as an unforgiving dictatorship that rewrites the memories of its inhabitants. And through it all, Mars was the stage where humans could imagine new utopias, dystopias, alternate histories.

[Robert Zubrin]

Science fiction has had a role in all of this, in laying out a vision of the future, enable people to see with their imaginations what not yet can be seen with their eyes.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And it's clearly influenced musk a great.

[Elon Musk]

Deal, particularly when I was a kid I just consumed like all science fiction and fantasy, you know movies, books, anything at all.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

His imagination was fueled by his childhood love of video games and sci fi novels his mom remembers him reading late into the night. Is it surprising that many of his business ideas sound ripped straight from their Pages and screens? SpaceX's rocket ships, Neuralink's brain computer interfaces creating new cyborgs, Xai's massive data centers and its anti woke grok chatbot, and Tesla's practically silent battery powered cars that are supposed to drive themselves.

[Elon Musk]

I mean I certainly like Star Trek because that actually shows like more of a utopian future. Like it's not like things like aren't horrible in the future. Like there's so many bloody post apocalyptic futures. Like okay, can we have one? That's nice, just a few.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

But he doesn't seem to consume science fiction for its allegorical power or its ability to critique the world around us. For a white boy from apartheid South Africa, sci fi could have offered a lens through which to understand the bitterly unequal highly engineered society in which he grew up. Instead, it fulfilled an amoral fantasy of escape. There is one book more than any other that shaped Musk's plans for SpaceX and his dream of a Martian civilization. In the late 1940s, Isaac Asimov began publishing his foundation stories, which became a trilogy of novels.

[Robert Zubrin]

There's this grand galactic empire and this scientist, Harry Seldon recognizes that it's gonna collapse.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

The series follows Harry Seldon, a mathematician who created a probability based method of predicting the future. When he forecasts an impending planetary collapse, he establishes a place where he can preserve all knowledge and start a new civilization.

[Robert Zubrin]

And so he decides to put a bunch of scientists on this planet, on the edge of the galaxy. The planet's called Terminus, the edge of the galaxy and so that they can rebuild galactic civilization after it collapses. And in fact Musk even calls his proposed city on Mars Terminus.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

He also named one of his children after Seldon. For Musk, Asimov is a model, a sort of instruction manual for saving humanity in the event of an apocalypse on Earth. It's technocracy as practiced by a would be trillionaire who thinks he can do the impossible. We may not entirely believe it, but he does.

[Elon Musk]

Each launch is about learning more and more about what's needed to make life multi planetary.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

This is Musk addressing SpaceX in May 2025. Musk wants us not just to go to Mars, but to settle there. 1 million people by 2050. According to his own timeline, the first uncrewed mission of Starship SpaceX's massive rocket is supposed to launch in 2026.

[Elon Musk]

Ideally, we can take anyone who wants to go to Mars. We can take to Mars.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk's plan sounds democratic, almost utopian. Anyone who wants to can hitch a ride to Mars. These won't just be novelty celebrity space flights. His Starship rockets will, he believes, be the American airlines of cosmic travel. Musk is pitching a planet B a way to avoid the sort of collapse that played out in Asimov's books.

[Elon Musk]

Mars can potentially come to the rescue of Earth. If something goes wrong, us humans could do something crazy like World War three. Hopefully not, but it's possible. And then if we only have one planet, the neck, that could be curtains.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

As important as Mars is to Musk, space colonization doesn't need to stop there.

[Elon Musk]

And then we go beyond Mars and ultimately to other star systems, and we can be out there among the stars, making science fiction. No longer fiction.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

It's a compelling vision, one that became a rallying call to attract the most talented, ambitious engineers.

[Tom Moline]

So very early on, even in, like, the first day when they sit you down for the very limited amount of training that everyone has to go through before starting their work, the thing they emphasize is that the goal of SpaceX is to make life multiplanetary, right? So in particular, to have humans get to Mars and beyond.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Tom Moline joined SpaceX in 2014 as an engineer on the Dragon program, which transports people and cargo to the International Space Station. As someone who dreamed of working in space, he was drawn to the company's ambition. But from the start, he saw red flags off color, juvenile jokes in meetings, and a culture where the loudest voice wins.

[Tom Moline]

That is kind of an ongoing, consistent, toxic culture that existed within the company. And that all comes, like, directly from Elon Musk in terms of how people behave, their work interactions.

[Darina]

Elon Musk's private company, SpaceX, has dismissed at least five employees over the curation and circulation of a letter denouncing the CEO and requesting more inclusivity within the workplace.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

In the open letter in 2022, when a sexual assault allegation against Musk involving a crew member from SpaceX's corporate jet became public, Tom watched the CEO make light of it on Twitter and vehemently deny the allegation, stating it was a politically motivated attack. Musk, however, failed to comment on the $250,000 settlement allegedly paid to the accuser and reported by Business Insider. But for Tom, the final straw came when SpaceX's COO, his boss, Gwynne Shotwell, sent a message to the employees.

[Tom Moline]

She stated that, you know, we at SpaceX take all these sort of claims very seriously. However, I have been a personal friend of Elon for many years, and I don't think it is possible for him to have done this.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Tom saw this as an affront to anyone who had suffered that kind of harassment, and he was spurred into action. He helped organize an open letter calling on SpaceX to condemn Musk's harmful Twitter behavior, calling it an embarrassment and a distraction from their collective mission. And the message was resonating.

[Tom Moline]

And within that first 24 hours, we had over 400 people sign on the.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Company'S response was swift and immediate.

[Tom Moline]

So he took me downstairs to a conference room with frosted glass, which is never a good sign.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

The next day, Tom was asked into a meeting with the head of HR and Gwynne Shotwell, who joined via a video call.

[Tom Moline]

They sat me down and told me that they had performed an investigation, that they had determined that I was instrumental in the conceiving, rating and distribution of the open letter.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Chiming in remotely, Shotwell delivered the final blow, revealing exactly what mattered most to SpaceX leadership.

[Tom Moline]

Basically, I'm very disappointed that you guys would broadcast such a thing to the company. This distracts from our ability to go to Mars as quickly as possible. I'm very disappointed in you. So I was the first one. But they fired four other people on that day and then over the next month fired four additional people and interrogated dozens more.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Inside SpaceX, Musk's personal ideology defined the company's mission. In a boss cop like culture, if Musk was the boss not to be questioned, getting to Mars became a kind of moral shield for his unfettered authority. For Tom, it seemed like any complaint, any criticism, could be cast as standing in the way of Destiny. But what if that destiny isn't even possible?

[Adam Becker]

Mostly, Musk's plans for Mars are delusional.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Adam Becker is a science journalist with a background in astrophysics and the author of More Everything. AI Overlords, Space Empires and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, which he says is about the terrible plans the tech billionaires have for the future and why they don't work. In Becker's view, Mars is one of those terrible plans.

[Adam Becker]

Just to be absolutely clear, Mars is absolutely awful. Mars is a terrible, terrible place.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

One of the major sticking points for Adam is, well, Mars itself.

[Adam Becker]

There's a spot in my book where I say that Mars would make Antarctica look like Tahiti. And honestly, I was a little hesitant to write that in the book because I thought that that was actually an understatement.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

It's not just that Mars is an unforgiving environment. It's completely uninhabitable.

[Adam Becker]

Gravity is too low, the radiation levels are too high, there is no air and the dirt is made of poison.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

There's not much for humans to work with there. The main challenge would be not dying immediately.

[Adam Becker]

The air pressure on Mars is so low that the saliva would boil off your tongue as you die.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And if you manage to make it past that point, the odds aren't much better.

[Adam Becker]

Ultimately, you know, if you lived on the surface of Mars, For a few years. Even if you somehow, you know, could keep your spacesuit running for that long, you would die of cancer.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

But surely science can find a way. Shields against radiation, ways to create or capture oxygen. Maybe they could build a dome like in the Martian.

[Adam Becker]

So you would need to shield yourself in some way. The easiest way to do that is to dig a tunnel underground and then you can pressurize that. But then you have to deal with the fact that Martian dust is very fine and toxic. It's filled with these compounds called perchlorates, which are, you know, highly, highly toxic to basically all plant and animal life.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

So if radiation doesn't get you, the toxic dirt probably will. Then there are the problems of irregular launch windows and huge lags in communications. It could take more than 20 minutes for a message to travel between Earth and Mars. And that's just to get started. When thinking not just about surviving on Mars, but creating a whole city, a terminus, the project becomes off the charts difficult, unlike anything humanity has ever attempted before.

[Adam Becker]

We do not know whether it is possible to, you know, have a baby on Mars. We don't know if you can bring a pregnancy to term. We don't know, even if you can, whether or not that child would be able to then, you know, grow and develop properly in Martian gravity. And if they did all of those things, we don't know whether they'd ever be able to come to Earth.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

And another big question for Adam is the why of it all.

[Adam Becker]

Think about for a moment what all of that would be like.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Living in tunnels underground, toxic dirt just behind the walls, never going outside, except for short, dangerous missions to the surface, unsure of the long term impacts on your body and mind. No real time communication with anyone back home on Earth. No certainty you would ever be able to go back even if you wanted to.

[Adam Becker]

And Musk wants to put a million people there.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Life on Mars would be nasty, brutish and short and probably unsustainable. So why cling on to the dream of a planet B? Is Earth such a lost cause? Musk has expressed his certainty in an impending apocalypse. But it also seems like a convenient out.

[Adam Becker]

I think that acknowledging that Earth is precious and this is where we make our stand and like this is where we, we have to stay for the foreseeable future. That imposes a limitation that Musk is just not willing to acknowledge. And you know, he thinks, I think that you can overcome absolutely any limitation just by being arrogant enough and ignoring enough people telling you that you can't do it if you have enough Money and power, you maybe can ignore that and get away with it, as Musk has, you know, allegedly demonstrated many times. But the laws of physics don't work that way. Human biology does not work that way. You cannot get around the kinds of limits that prevent a million people from living on Mars in an independent colony.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Musk doesn't seem to agree. Rather than techno optimism, it could be described as hubris and from Adam's perspective, an almost delusional faith that engineering can overcome any physical limits. And it also looks to Adam, willful a way to refuse to recognize any ethical limits on one man's power. It's a way to accumulate an unbelievable amount of resources in the service of an oligarch's vision that when you take a close look at it, doesn't seem so democratic or humanitarian. Adam, in case you can't tell, is pretty steadfast in his position on Mars. But he isn't the only one.

[Adam Becker]

I think the overwhelming majority of scientists agree that the challenges with going to Mars are just tremendous. Even the people who are the most gung ho about going to Mars and, and are dismissive of all kinds of very serious problems about Mars. Musk still seems too optimistic, even for most of those scientists.

[Tom Moline]

We just launched the world's biggest rocket again, dropped a couple satellites off suborbital. Time to go through the data. Really crazy cool to hit all those objectives today.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Yeah, huge shout out to all the teams who make this look easy. Despite widespread scientific skepticism and Musk's chaotic behavior, SpaceX continues to make progress. There have been some spectacular explosive failures, but Starship has also had some successful launches. And the US government remains hopelessly dependent on SpaceX for its satellite launch capabilities. It's impossible to think of NASA returning to the moon without SpaceX. But even optimists like Zubrin, who literally wrote the book about why humans should go to Mars, are troubled by the scope of Musk's promises.

[Robert Zubrin]

I think this is bat guano crazy. You don't just land a million people on Mars like Normandy Beach. A Mars colony has to be built up organically, like the colonization of the New World, where you first had little colonies that established some farms, and now you can bring in more colonists and they create shops and sawmills and now you can build houses and send more people. And it develops over time. And I believe that Mars will be settled that way over time, but not this other thing.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

For Zubrin, Mars is still possible, just not the way Musk is pitching things. It needs to be incremental Science first, with small missions and robots leading the way. And even Adam Becker, the astrophysicist turned journalist, isn't writing off space travel completely.

[Adam Becker]

What do I think our future relationship with space should be? I think we should send a lot more probes out into space. I think there's all sorts of amazing mysteries that we could solve and questions that we could, you know, can't even begin to ask now that we could start to ask and maybe even answer and, you know, yes, I would like us to make sure that everyone on Earth is safe and comfortable before we start spending enormous amounts of money exploring space. But also that's a false dichotomy, like we can do both, and I would like to see us do both. But the future of humanity is here on Earth.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

The future of humanity is here on Earth. But Musk's may not be. It's a striking shift. Earlier in his career, Musk staked his fortune on saving this planet. Electric cars, solar energy, giant batteries to wean us off fossil fuels. But more and more, his focus has drifted from fixing Earth to escaping it.

[Tom Moline]

Once you said you want to die on Mars.

[Adam Becker]

Why?

[Elon Musk]

To be clear, I don't want to die on Mars. I mean, we're all going to die someday. And if you're going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars?

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

Yet the boy who dreamed of life beyond Earth, who grew up to own a rocket ship company, has never actually gone to space, even as suborbital flights have become popular with pop stars and crypto bros. What would his adventure, hungry grandfather Joshua Haldeman, have made of his grandson's reluctance to take to the skies? Or did Haldeman's sudden death in a flying accident stand as a warning for Musk?

[Elon Musk]

But it's not some kind of Mars death wish. And if I do die on Mars, I just don't want it to be on impact.

[Narrator (Jacob Silverman)]

When the first starship sets off for the Mars colony, will Musk be on? Across his life, Musk has thrived in bubbles, where he can enjoy extraordinary levels of privilege and deference. From gated communities in South Africa to his private compound in Texas to his companies, where he is the unquestioned boss cop, the boss man. Mars is the final bubble. A whole planet sealed from the rest of humanity. It's the ultimate test of whether a pseudo religious faith in the power of capital, bossism and engineering can transform the world. But physics and biology suggest otherwise. Musk can fire employees at will. He can buy media platforms and buy his way into government. He can even engineer children, but he can't rewrite the laws of physics. Mars is not waiting to be engineered into a habitable place for hundreds of millions of people, and no amount of money or willpower will change that. Musk's obsession has always been legacy, from his companies, to his many children, to his dream of a new planet. Even as a teenage gamer, he wanted to be known as Elon the Great. But legacy depends on how you're remembered, not how you think of yourself. A man shaped by colonial attitudes appears never to have left that worldview behind, as if he had never truly escaped Pretoria. Or maybe he never wanted to. We contacted Elon Musk through his family office. He did not respond to our request for comment. The Making of Musk is a chalk and blade production for cbc. It is written and produced by Jason Phipps, M. Walley, Eva Krisiak and me, Jacob Silverman. This episode features clips from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, the Computer History Museum, SpaceX, 60 Minutes, Red Ram Productions, Aereo, Astrocentennial Symposium, Sky Australia, Associated Press and News Live South Africa Matthew Blackman is our South African story consultant. Fabiola Melendez Carletti is our coordinating producer. Mixing and sound design by Julia Whitman. Our story editor is Derek John. Our Executive producer is Nick McCabe. Lokos our podcast art was designed by Sammy Witwer at Good Tape Studios. Our cross promo producers are Amanda Cox and Kelsey Cueva. Our video producers are Evan Agard, Tamina Aziz and John Lee. For CBC, Podcast executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the Senior manager, Arif Narrani is the director and Leslie Merklinger is the Executive Director of CBC Podcasts. The Managing Editor of CBC News Podcasts is Karen Burgess. You can follow Understood on whatever app you're using to listen to me now and check out my previous season, the Naked Emperor A Deep dive into Fallen Crypto King Sam Bankman Fried. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.