There might be something to SpaceX head Elon Musk’s opinions about extraterrestrial civilizations, Roscosmos Director-General Yury Borisov has said.
Speaking at a Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles on Monday, Musk speculated that space probes could eventually find remanants of ancient civilizations in space.
“Musk is an authority on this, he should probably be believed,” Borisov told TASS on Tuesday, when asked about the tech entrepreneur’s comments.
Roscosmos has had a friendly rivalry with SpaceX in recent years, as NASA began delegating the bulk of American space projects to Musk’s private company.
“We want to make sure that the Apollo [program] is not the high-water mark” of human space exploration, Musk argued on Monday at the Milken Institute event.
Explaining his long-running argument about the need for humanity to be a “multi-planet civilization,” Musk argued that any species that fails to do so is basically just waiting to be wiped out.
“We want to get past the Fermi filter of being a single-planet civilization,” Musk added. “If we send probes out there we might find the remains of long-dead alien civilizations.”
However, Musk dismissed the notion that aliens might be visiting the earth or living among humans as something out of Hollywood.
“I have not seen any evidence of aliens,” on our planet, Musk said, adding that SpaceX’s Starlink system has roughly 6,000 satellites, “and not once have we had to maneuver around a UFO.” This absence of alien visitors actually suggests that “civilization is precarious and rare,” he added.
Musk has frequently spoken about his plans to colonize Mars by 2050, building a fleet of 1,000 spaceships over the next decade.
Borisov took over Roscosmos in July 2022, having previously served as deputy prime minister for defense and space industries. While Musk has made reaching Mars his obsession, Borisov has spearheaded Roscosmos efforts to develop heavier rocket boosters and build a Russian space station that would replace the aging ISS.