By Tim Binnall
SpaceX founder Elon Musk briefly discussed the possibility that intelligent extraterrestrials may be out in space and largely dismissed such a scenario. The colorful entrepreneur reportedly made the comments on Saturday at the long-awaited unveiling of his private space company's reusable launch system known as 'Starship Mk.' While musing about his ambition to quickly develop a self-sustaining colony on Mars, he observed that "as far as we know, we're the only consciousness or the only life that's out there. There might be other life, but we've seen no signs of it."
Musk went on to note that he often gets asked "'what do you know about the aliens," presumably since the head of a massive private space company might have some insight into the matter. However, he claimed that he is as in the dark about the subject as the rest of us, revealing that "I'm pretty sure I'd know if there were aliens" and yet "I've not seen any sign of aliens."
Regarding the longstanding belief of many that the government knows about the existence of aliens and is keeping the information hidden from the public, Musk offered his own somewhat conspiratorial answer to that idea. "Let me tell you, the fastest way to increase defense funding," he said, would be to announce "hey, we found an alien." For that reason, he seemed doubtful that the government would cover-up their knowledge of ETs for very long, arguing that "guaranteed, that would be on display in like two seconds."
He wrapped up his thoughts on extraterrestrials by asserting that "the reality is, as far as we know, this is the only place, at least in this part of the galaxy or in the Milky Way, where there is consciousness." When pressed by a member of the audience who jokingly said that they didn't believe Musk when he claimed not to have knowledge of aliens, he responded "I hope I'm wrong. If they are here, I hope they're nice. You know, they haven't killed us yet, so they must be not that bad."