The fake news that helped put us on a path to Mars

The richest person in the world is obsessed with creating a city on Mars.

Elon Musk would like to see a million people living in a self-sufficient Martian settlement by 2050, both as a plan B for Earth and because it gives us something cool to get excited about.

Traveling to Mars has been a recurring theme of spacefaring fantasies for decades, from the German rocket innovator Wernher von Braun to science fiction writers Ray Bradbury and Kim Stanley Robinson. Human exploits on Mars have also been the subject of countless movies, TV shows, and comic books.

There are many good reasons to explore Mars. The discovery of water deep below the surface and ice at its poles suggests that the conditions to sustain life may have existed on the Red Planet, and perhaps still do. Studying Mars could t