Elon Musk tells Kara Swisher it would be ironic if he died on Mars

Elon
Musk and SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket is designed to carry up to
100 people and deliver 150 tons of cargo to
Mars.
SpaceX; NASA; Mark Brake/Getty
Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider

• Elon Musk is trying to colonize
  Mars with his rocket company, SpaceX.
• The tech mogul has said a mission to the red planet
  could be deadly but has hinted he may go at some
  point.
• Musk appeared on a Recode Decode podcast
  episode with journalist Kara Swisher on Friday, and they
  discussed how he once joked he’d die on Mars.
• Musk said that’d be ironic, but added that he thinks
  “the most ironic outcome is the most probable.”

Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, want to send people to
the surface of Mars and eventually
colonize the red planet.

Today that goal seems much closer to reality than when Musk
founded SpaceX in 2002. The company is making progress toward
building a fully reusable launch system to get there, called

Big Falcon Rocket, and even
workshopping mission plans with NASA and other experts.

The trip won’t be easy — something Musk has openly and frequently
acknowledged.

“The first journey to Mars is going to be really very dangerous.
The risk of fatality will be high. There’s just no way around
it,” Musk
said in 2016. “It would be basically: Are you prepared to
die? And if that’s OK, then you’re a candidate for going.”

Read more:

This speculative SpaceX timeline reveals roughly when, where, and
how Elon Musk plans to colonize Mars

Still, Musk has left open the possibility that he himself might
one day go on a Mars mission, though not the first one.

So when he appeared on a Recode podcast episode with
journalist Kara Swisher on Friday, she brought up the topic.

“Last time we talked, you said you wanted to die on Mars, just
not on landing. Which was a very funny joke, although it’s
probably not a joke,” Swisher said.

“It’d be ironic if that had happened,” Musk responded.

An illustration of the
spaceship of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, landing on
Mars.

SpaceX

In explaining his thinking, Musk quoted a friend who reportedly
said, “the most ironic outcome is the most likely.”

“I think that there’s some truth to that,” Musk added. “And then
also I think sometimes the most entertaining outcome is the most
likely.”

Swisher joked that it might be entertaining if he died banging
his head on the red planet.

“I mean, hopefully me dying on impact on Mars is not the most
entertaining outcome. … It’s ironic,” Musk responded. “Because
then what happens next? It’s like, ok, you’re a crater.”

He and Swisher also discussed more serious aspects of SpaceX,
including progress on its
Falcon 9 rockets, the
Commercial Crew Program to launch
NASA astronauts into space, and pushing the envelope of
reusable launch systems.

“This year’s been great for SpaceX,” Musk said. “We successfully
launched the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is the most powerful
rocket in the world by a factor of two. And we actually launched
a Tesla — my Tesla Roadster — to Mars orbit.”

Read Recode’s full interview
here.

More from Elon Musk’s Recode appearance: