Elon Musk is harbouring a “harmful phantasm” {that a} colony will be established on Mars, the Astronomer Royal has warned.Prof Lord Martin Rees, who can also be the co-founder of the Centre for the Examine of Existential Threat on the College of Cambridge, mentioned that it will be simpler to unravel local weather change on Earth than look to flee to a different planet.Talking on Lord Speaker’s Nook, the podcast for the Home of Lords, Lord Rees mentioned that travelling to different planets needs to be left to personal pioneers and never be a objective for nationwide governments.He described Musk as a “extraordinary determine” with a “reasonably unusual persona”, however mentioned that he didn’t agree together with his plan to construct a metropolis on Mars.“I disagree with him on that. I feel there could be a couple of loopy pioneers dwelling on Mars, identical to there are folks dwelling on the South Pole, though it’s far much less hospitable than the South Pole,” he mentioned.“However the thought of mass migration to keep away from the Earth’s issues, which he and some different area lovers undertake, that, I feel, is a harmful phantasm.“I don’t suppose it’s lifelike and we’ve bought to unravel these issues right here on Earth. Coping with local weather change on Earth is a doddle in comparison with making Mars liveable. So I don’t suppose we should always maintain that out as a long-term intention in any respect.”The long-term objective of SpaceX has been to design rockets and spacecraft that may land and take-off from the floor of different planets – John Raoux/APIn 2016, Musk introduced plans to construct a settlement on Mars and mentioned that he hoped to make people a multiplanetary species.The long-term objective of his firm SpaceX has been to design rockets and spacecraft that may land and take-off from the floor of different planets.The corporate just lately carried out a profitable orbital insertion of Starship, the vessel that can take people again to the Moon and past.On the newest launch, SpaceX mentioned that sooner or later, Starship would make many journeys taking supplies and tools to Mars to start out a metropolis.Musk has mentioned that he believes Mars could possibly be a “back-up drive” for humanity within the occasion of catastrophic international warming, an asteroid strike or a nuclear winter, and believes that the planet could possibly be warmed by nuclear weapons.Lord Rees mentioned: “He has carried out a significantly better job than the massive conglomerates that used to work for Nasa in producing environment friendly rockets, which will be reused, and that can make it cheaper to truly ship stuff into area and extra possible to have some engineering carried out in area and even photo voltaic vitality gathered from area.“My line on human area flight is that it shouldn’t be funded publicly, definitely not by authorities businesses as a result of they’ve bought to be very security aware and that makes it very costly.“Robots can do all the sensible issues, assembling large constructions in area and exploring the floor of Mars and all that. If people need to fly into area as an journey, then maybe they are often supported by sponsorship or the billionaires.“We all know that Messrs Musk and Bezos are spending billions on area exploration and so they might maybe launch the type of folks, adventurers ready to simply accept a really excessive danger and due to this fact be launched far more cheaply.“So my line is that robots ought to do all the sensible issues and solely individuals who actually have a excessive urge for food for danger needs to be going into area, and they need to be privately funded, not by the remainder of us.”Elon Musk has mentioned that he believes Mars could possibly be a ‘back-up drive’ for humanity within the occasion of catastrophic occasion – CARINA JOHANSEN/AFPLord Rees additionally mentioned that he was deeply involved in regards to the prospect of a lethal virus being engineered in a lab via gain-of-function analysis that seeks to extend the efficiency of a pathogen.Though he mentioned that he believes people will survive the twenty first century, he added: “We might get to the stage when some biologist can, because it have been, play God on the kitchen desk and make some new variant of a virus, which may be very, very harmful.“Covid-19 unfold globally as we all know, and even worse is in my opinion, the likelihood that individuals with evil intent would possibly engineer extra harmful viruses as a result of it’s attainable by a way known as achieve of perform to make viruses extra virulent and transmissible than the pure variants.“And if that may be carried out and that leaks out by error or by design, that might trigger a fair worse pandemic than the pure ones.”He known as for higher regulation and surveillance of lab experiments.“I feel that the one manner we will make ourselves adequately protected towards a attainable mega catastrophe of an engineered pandemic is by accepting extra intrusive surveillance than we’ve needed to settle for up until now,” he added.Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Strive The Telegraph free for 3 months with limitless entry to our award-winning web site, unique app, money-saving gives and extra.