EMILY:

Elon Musk has been talking about Mars for a very, very, very long time.

RUBY:

Emily Glazer is a reporter focused on power and influence at the Wall Street Journal and so for her, there’s no bigger story than Elon Musk.

EMILY:

For us, and I would say especially for me, we were interested in understanding what Elon was doing to try to get to Mars for several months. But then it all kind of crystallised the week of President Trump's inauguration because there was a very important sentence in there that struck a lot of people in the space community and elsewhere.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”

EMILY:

President Trump, in his inaugural address, talked about having astronauts plant a flag on Mars.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation and right now our nation is more ambitious than any other.”

RUBY:

What Emily knew is that this moment was something that Musk had been working towards. The hundreds of millions of dollars he put into Trump’s campaign, the public support, a lot of it came down to this.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“And it’s my plan. I’ll talk to Elon. Elon, get those rocket ships going because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term. We want to do it...”

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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Today, in part one of a special double episode, Emily Glazer on how Musk is using his new powers to pursue his Mars mission.

It’s Thursday, April 10.

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RUBY:

Emily, you were watching as Donald Trump announced that he wanted to plant a flag on Mars. So, can you describe to me what it was like to hear him say that?

EMILY:

You know, I was actually at the World Economic Forum atop the Swiss mountains in Davos, Switzerland, and I am not saying that as a humble brag, I swear. I'm saying that because there are a lot of space-related panels and programming there and different government space officials from all over the world. And so it was a really interesting place to be as President Trump was during his inauguration, but also to go to these various space events and people were just floored. They were so excited. Multiple different people, the head of the European Space Agency and the head of the Japanese Space Agency both said on the record in interviews that it was akin to when JFK talked about getting men on the moon. I mean, this was like a moment and many in the space community were very excited. They also wanted to get in on it. I had the head of, you know, the Japanese Space Agency talk about all the work Japan was doing in researching minerals in Mars, and the European Space Agency was talking about all the collaboration, and then a whole bunch of different space companies that were on the ground there trying to, kind of, make a name for themselves. So I think that was when we were sort of like, oh, now that President Trump is putting it in his inaugural address, it's a very big deal and something that the White House may be prioritising.

RUBY:

And so when you heard Trump talk about Mars, did you immediately think about Elon?

EMILY:

I think about Elon a lot. It's part of my job. But absolutely I did. I mean, look, the Wall Street Journal first broke the story about how Elon Musk and Donald Trump had talked about Musk being an advisor should Trump win. And so the relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump has been on my mind for more than a year. We wrote the article about Elon giving roughly $45 million a month toward re-electing President Trump, and part of the reason why I was working on this is the fruits of Elon's labours are coming home to roost. And so, when I heard that in the inaugural address, the first thing that I thought of was, wow Elon's influence. This is big time.

RUBY:

And Donald Trump recently announced his pick to take over leading the space agency NASA, a billionaire entrepreneur named Jared Isaacman. So, what do we know about him?

EMILY:

Jared is an astronaut and so he knows a lot about space. He has experience, of course, in space, actually like flying himself, and Elon Musk and Jared Isaacman have known each other for years.

Audio Excerpt - Jared Isaacman:

“I mean I've been an aviation and space enthusiast since, well, since kindergarten. And, you know, I thought becoming an astronaut you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning. So I had this parallel career in aviation…”

EMILY:

Jared was an astronaut on SpaceX flights. The two we know have hung out socially and they've even given to charitable causes together. And so far, everybody that I and my colleagues have talked to have said that Isaacman, while he's not like necessarily a traditional choice, you know, prior NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine was a congressman beforehand, we've largely heard very positive things about Jared. Jared is someone who really believes in exploring space and a number of people have actually shared that he is very risk tolerant, to the point where we heard that even some people at SpaceX have been worried in years past about his level of risk more so than the company itself.

Audio Excerpt - Jared Isaacman:

“My top agenda, what I'm incredibly passionate about, is the competitiveness of our nation. You know, we started leading in this new domain. We have to continue to do so.”

EMILY:

So for example, on one mission that he flew he wanted to go at a higher altitude and that worried some people within SpaceX, and he kind of pushed for it and they ended up flying at that higher altitude. They were worried about kind of like debris, space debris, and he got his way. And so I found it really interesting that he is someone that is open to risks and maybe that's part of what fuels his friendship with Elon Musk. But it was very interesting when we learned that Elon had actually called Jared on the phone to offer him the NASA position.

RUBY:

And so do we know any more about that phone call between Musk and Isaacman and what was said, and then I suppose what happened immediately afterwards?

EMILY:

So we know that this phone call happened late last year and that Elon called Jared with a request. And it was basically, would Jared become the head of NASA. And part of Elon's pitch to Jared was that they could make NASA great again and work toward their shared ambition of getting humans to Mars. Our understanding is that that was something that really sat well with Jared. And soon after the call, Trump announced that Jared was appointed NASA administrator.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“Trump intends to put tech billionaire and entrepreneur Jared Isaacman in charge of the government space agency. Isaacman’s appointment could shake up the race…”

RUBY:

Ok, so we have this very risk tolerant billionaire astronaut announced as the next head of NASA. We're still waiting for his confirmation and for him to begin in that role, but tell me about what's been happening behind the scenes at NASA since the Trump administration came to power.

EMILY:

So I've been kind of thinking about this in a few different ways. One is that Elon Musk is installing loyalists as head or key roles of crucial agencies that impact the ability to get to Mars. Obviously, that phone call with Jared is, like, you know, a huge example of that. He also has been behind the scenes navigating how to change federal spending, so to get to programs that are related to Mars. And then he also has DOGE, where he has access to technology systems, personnel, budgets and has just tonnes of information. So there's been a lot that Elon has been doing behind the scenes to reorder a number of NASA's programs. President Trump puts out, you know, this announcement that Jared is appointed NASA administrator. And then NASA staff, on January 31st, got an email, that we reviewed, from the agency's acting administrator, Janet Petro. So she's the person who is leading NASA until there is a confirmed NASA administrator. And they welcomed a new senior advisor and it was a longtime SpaceX executive named Michael Altenhofen who had worked at SpaceX for like 15 years. And while he was at SpaceX, he also became close to Isaacmann and talks to Isaacmann frequently. And he took up this position right away ahead of the confirmation hearing and the way that it was described to us is that he is basically shadowing the acting administrator. And that's just one more person who has ties to Elon Musk, who's now already at NASA even before Jared is confirmed.

RUBY:

So as Musk wants to speed up the timeline to get to Mars, what would it take to get there? That’s after the break.

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RUBY:

So Emily, can we talk a bit more about Elon Musk and his relationship to Mars? I mean, he's spoken about it a lot in the past, you know, his vision for humanity to get there. So tell me a bit about the backstory here and how he's framing this new push.

EMILY:

So Elon Musk founded SpaceX more than 20 years ago in 2002, and the mission was to take humanity to other planets. That has totally infused SpaceX's culture with that long-term goal and SpaceX was on the brink of failure many different times.

Audio Excerpt - SpaceX engineer:

”Three…two…one…”

EMILY:

It completed a successful launch of its first rocket in 2008 after having failures beforehand.

Audio Excerpt - SpaceX engineer:

“We have liftoff! SpaceX Falcon 1 launch vehicle. Falcon has cleared the tower.”

EMILY:

And it eventually developed the Falcon 9 rocket and that could be partially reused. So this was a game changer in the space industry because it lowered the cost of launches and it also took the market share from incumbent rocket operators, especially a really large company like Boeing. Over the years, Elon has talked about Mars all the time and he also talks a lot about multi-planetary life.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“Starship is the first rocket that has the potential to make life multi-planetary, to make us a multi-planet civilisation for the first time.”

EMILY:

And he envisions a world, or a universe I guess I should say, where there is civilization on Mars. It even got to the point where just recently SpaceX brought back these astronauts, returned them from space. It was, like, a huge success for SpaceX and something that was seen around the world, and Elon Musk had an interview with Fox News. And as he was being interviewed and asked about all of this, he started talking about Mars and just didn't want to stop.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“We are going to be able to take astronauts to Mars. In fact, we want to take anyone who goes to Mars and ultimately build a self-sustaining civilisation on Mars. That is the long-term goal of the company. Make life multi-planetary.”

RUBY:

And I mean, what would it actually take to make something like that a reality? What is it like on Mars and what would it take to actually set up a colony there?

EMILY:

Ooh, those are big questions. I mean, I will say in terms of actually getting to Mars, just to like break this down a little bit, it can take roughly a week to get to the moon and back. It can take an estimated two to three years for a round trip between Earth and Mars. So let's just start there. Like this is gonna take a very long time. What some people have mentioned to me is like the clock is ticking because if Musk feels like he has this four years while President Trump is in office to try to accomplish this goal that a number of people in the space community, both on the commercial side and government side across the world were kind of sceptical if that could happen. And then let's just talk about the cost. I mean, I talked to people that said, even if you take all of the various costs of different programmes that NASA has, and if you redirected everything, so this is like tens of billions of dollars, that still wouldn't be enough. And so there are also questions of, if Musk is able to shift some of the federal spending toward Mars, would he also have to self-fund some of it? And we are talking about the richest man in the world, so in some ways the sky’s the limit.

RUBY:

So everything about this seems incredibly ambitious, expensive, time consuming. Why do you think it is that Musk wants it so much, to be able to build a colony on Mars?

EMILY:

When I have talked to people close to Musk, they've told me that his ultimate ambition is to get to Mars and that for his legacy, it's not about having power, it's not about having money, it's not about having influence. All those things are nice benefits that he is enjoying, but he wants to be the person that can get people to Mars. In terms of why he wants to make life multi-planetary, I think that he feels like there should be other options besides planet Earth so that in case there are, you know, more natural disasters or other issues that there are other options. And I think he, along with a lot of people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, hope that they can live a really long time. And so I think he's thinking into the future, you know, generations of, where will humans live if Earth continues at the rate that we're going at?

RUBY:

We’ll be back tomorrow with Part 2 of our interview with Emily Glazer, as we look at how Musk’s vision is jeopardising NASA's current space projects.

EMILY:

There's this programme at NASA that is known as Artemis and it's a long-range plan to explore the moon and eventually Mars. And one idea that we know Musk and government officials have talked about is a scenario where SpaceX would give up its moon-focused Artemis contracts that are worth more than $4 billion and that would, kind of, shift the money behind the scenes and also, frankly, benefit SpaceX which is the private space company that Elon Musk runs.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

The latest round of US tariffs on dozens of countries have come into effect, including a 104% retaliatory tariff against China.

President Trump almost doubled duties on Chinese imports, originally set at 54%, after China announced their own counter-tariffs and vowed to quote “fight to the end,” over what it views as blackmail.

And,

The family of Dawn Singleton, one of the Bondi Junction stabbing victims, has launched legal action against the Nine Network and The Sydney Morning Herald.

The action is over photos in Nine’s 60 Minutes program, which they claim were used without their permission, and was launched ahead of the inquest into the deaths of 7 people killed at Bondi Junction Westfield on April 13, 2024.

I'm Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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