Elon Musk's plan for a Mars colony
Musk has said Martians should choose their own government and has recommended direct democracy with laws short enough for anyone to read.
Article by Rebel News staff.
A TikTok video making the rounds claims Starlink's terms of service contain a clause about Mars. Ezra Levant didn't believe it until he checked the company's website himself, and on Tuesday's Ezra Levant Show, he confirmed it's real.
Services on Earth or the moon fall under Texas law. But for services on Mars, or in transit there, the parties recognize Mars as a "free planet" over which no Earth-based government has authority, with disputes settled by self-governing principles established at the time of settlement.
Space lawyers called it meaningless, and Ezra agreed they're technically right. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bars any nation from claiming a celestial body and makes each country responsible for its private companies in space. But this spring, SpaceX filed an S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of going public, and that sworn document grants Elon Musk one billion restricted shares worth roughly $165 billion, vesting only if SpaceX hits targets including "a permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants."
"That's not TikTok. That is a securities filing," Ezra said. "Investors are being asked to price a city on another planet."
So the Starlink clause isn't really law. "It's a recruiting poster," Ezra said. Nobody lines up to move to Baffin Island or Antarctica, but Mars offers something mankind hasn't had in more than a century: a frontier. Ask eight billion people if they'd go, Ezra said, and a million would raise their hands.
The race to get there is real.
SpaceX launches an estimated 85 to 90% of everything humanity sends into orbit. Take Musk away and China leads, having landed on the far side of the moon in 2019, returned samples from it in 2024, and put a rover on Mars in 2021. "If you think the Chinese Communist Party wouldn't love to plant its flag on the red planet first and then tell us what the rules are, well, you haven't been paying attention."
The bigger question, Ezra said, is which America shows up. One built the internet through DARPA and heard Kennedy declare, "We choose to go to the moon." The other handed oversight of the internet's naming system to a global body in 2016, while Britain agreed to give away the Chagos Islands and pay for the privilege.
"There's sort of a suicidal gene in the liberal West," Ezra said. "A reflex to give things away."
Musk has said Martians should choose their own government and has recommended direct democracy with laws short enough for anyone to read. And in a twist that sounds invented, Wernher von Braun's 1949 novel about the first Mars expedition gave the colony's leader a title: the Elon.
Ezra admitted he'd stay home. He loves Earth's forests, oceans, cathedrals and common law, none of which exist on Mars.
But for a certain kind of person, building everything from scratch would be the most thrilling thing they ever do.
"If the ship were leaving, if there was a seat, and if you knew you'd never see a forest again, would you go to Mars?"
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Ezra Levant
Rebel Commander
Ezra Levant is the founder and owner of Rebel News and the host of The Ezra Levant Show. He is the author of multiple best-selling books, including Ethical Oil, The Libranos, China Virus, and most recently, Trudeau's Secret Plan.
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COMMENTS
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Bernhard Jatzeck commented 2026-10-01 15:57:55 -0400 FlagConsidering much of what’s going on here, Mars might make a nice change. For one thing, the Liberals won’t be trying to build a high-speed rail line from Ottawa to, say, Olympus Mons.
