Nevermind that scientists say the sun won't be burning up the Earth for another six billion years, Elon Musk has a hot foot now to get humanity off this planet before it's too late.
Appearing Monday on the New York Times podcast "Sway," the billionaire entrepreneur told host Kara Swisher humanity has to become a "multi-planet species in a space faring civilization" to survive.
"I'm not trying to doom and gloom here but the fossil record does show that there have been many extinction events over the millennia," Musk said. "And these are from meteors from super volcanoes from just natural climate variation, which does become very severe but at a pace that would seem slow to us. And then eventually the sun’s going to expand and engulf Earth."
Musk's reusable rocket, dubbed the Spaceship, is set to eventually carry out that task. He wants to populate Mars. His friendly rival Jeff Bezos prefers to see humans living on space stations.
"But whatever, if you have advanced rockets you can decide whether you want to live on a space station thing or live on Mars. So, right now we’ve got a long way to go," he said. "Because we can’t even get back to the moon."
Musk said the Starship could be taking humans to space in just two years.
"I think we will launch Starship sometime next year, close to August," he said, saying it likely will run at first without people aboard.
"I think it will be safe for people in two years, but definitely three years."
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