Elon Musk has once again shared his vision for humanity’s future on Mars, offering a glimpse of how he envisions the future colony being governed. The tech billionaire and SpaceX CEO believes that direct democracy, where decisions are made by the people themselves rather than elected representatives, would be the ideal system for governing the Red Planet. Musk’s views came in response to a question from a user on his owned social media platform

Musk’s response was clear and prescient. He said that it would be up to the Martians themselves how to rule them, but he suggested that direct democracy might be the best approach.

“The Martians will decide how to rule them. I recommend direct democracy,” Musk wrote. He indicated that he envisions a more participatory form of government than typically seen on Earth. This means that Musk wants the people to have more power, bypassing the often complex and slow processes of representative governments.

Beyond governance, Musk also provided an update on SpaceX’s progress toward making Mars exploration a reality. According to Musk, unmanned Starships could begin landing on Mars within the next two years, possibly as early as 2026. He said fully crewed missions to Mars could come within four years, a timeline that could see the first humans set foot on Mars. 2028. This timeframe is dependent on several factors, including the continued development of SpaceX’s Starship, which is designed to carry both cargo and crew on long-range space missions.

Musk also discussed the enormous financial and technological challenges associated with establishing a human colony on Mars. They estimated that building a single self-sustaining city on the planet would cost more than $1,000 trillion – a staggering sum that is far greater than the current GDP of the United States, which stands at about $29 trillion. This enormous cost arises from the need to deliver at least one million tons of equipment and materials to Mars to support human life. Musk has previously noted that current Mars missions cost approximately $1 billion per ton of payload delivered to the planet, and he has noted the need for a 1000-fold improvement in rocket and spacecraft technology to make these missions economically viable. Emphasized.

One of the major hurdles facing SpaceX is reducing the cost of sending cargo and people to Mars. Currently, the high cost of space missions makes it prohibitively expensive to think about building a colony, but Musk remains optimistic that advances in reusable rockets and other technologies will help reduce these costs. If SpaceX succeeds in its plans, humans in the future could not only live on Mars, but also decide their own government system in a way that has never been done before. But, there is still a long time for this to become a reality.