From Eric Mack at Forbes, comments from Elon Musk about his ambition to establish a city on Mars within a dozen years:

“‘I’m hopeful that the first people can be taken to Mars in 10-12 years,’ Musk said on CNBC this week. ‘I think it’s certainly possible for that to occur.’

But just getting to the red planet is not nearly enough for Musk, who says it’s more important to have ‘a self-sustaining city on Mars, to make life multi-planetary.’

He says if humans fail to become a multi-planet species, we will inevitably just hang out here on Earth until some sort of extinction-level event occurs.

But figuring out how we get to Mars and set up shop there is just the beginning of Musk’s grandiose vision. In the past, he’s also said that we may need to figure out ways to bio-engineer our food and even ourselves to make Mars work for us.”