Haute 100: Elon Musk On Mars And A Zombie Apocalypse

Elon Musk is a force to be reckon with in the auto, aerospace and tech industries. He has one company hoping to transform transportation in California with a futuristic railway, another company revolutionizing the automobile industry and one company set to carry out its first mission for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Most recently, the South-African business magnate discussed a number of things with GQ magazine. Check out the most interesting excerpts from the interview below.

On Mars

When it comes to living on Mars, Musk has been vocal about his idea. In the interview we learn that in Musk’s mind, becoming multi-­planetary is just good common sense. He said, “You back up your hard drive…. Maybe we should back up life, too?”

How will we get to Mars, you wonder? Musk’s company SpaceX is currently on the rocket, which code name is BFR. Musk talks about the rocket and how we will get to Mars. He said, “Well, there’s two parts of it—there’s a booster rocket and there’s a spaceship. So the booster rocket’s just to get it out of Earth’s gravity because Earth has quite a deep gravity well and thick atmosphere, but the spaceship can go from Mars to Earth without any booster, because Mars’s gravity is weaker and the atmosphere’s thinner, so it’s got enough capability to get all the way back here by itself. It needs a helping hand out of Earth’s gravity well. So, technically, it would be the BFR and the BFS.”

On preparing for a zombie apocalypse

As Musk continues to improve the filters on the Tesla models, he has introduced the Bioweapon Defense Mode, which will, yes you guessed it, protect you from a zombie apocalypse or virus outbreak.

“We’re trying to be a leader in apocalypse defense scenarios. I really like the Bioweapon Defense thing. I mean, I was just going through it with the lead engineers on the air-filtration system, and I asked them, ‘So how good is this? Like, could any virus or bacteria get through?’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, it’s definitely gonna stop anything. So you basically wouldn’t even be able to measure it—it’s such a tiny number that it wouldn’t cause an infection, just as it would be for a hospital operating room.’ So I was like, ‘Wow, so if there was like a genetically engineered super-virus, you could get in your car and be safe?’ And they said, ‘Yes, we believe so.’ So, like, ‘Cool—we should call it, like, Bioweapon Defense Mode then.’ ”

To read the entire article, click here.