“We’ve got this delicate candle of consciousness flickering here, and it may be the only instance of consciousness, so it’s essential we preserve it,” Musk says.

At a gathering of PayPal alumni in Las Vegas, he sat in a cabana by the pool reading a tattered manual for a Russian rocket engine. When one of the alums, Mark Woolway, asked him what he planned to do next, Musk answered, “I’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind a multiplanetary civilization.” Woolway’s reaction was unsurp