“ The fast path to a self-sustaining city on Mars ” Saturday night saw entrepreneur and visionary Elon Musk standing in front of his gleaming stainless steel Starship in Boca Chica, Texas, explaining how he will increase Earth’s entire rocketry capacity a thousand fold in the next few years. If he can do that it will be giant leap for humanity that puts us back on track to become a true multiplanetary species by the end of this century, Here the story of how this transformation has come about. The summer men first walked on the Moon was just sixty-six years after Orville and Wilber Wright had flown their Flyer the not-so-vast distance of 36.5m just above sand dunes near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It was a mere forty-two years after Charles Lindbergh had flown the Spirit of St Louis across the vast Atlantic Ocean from Long Island to Paris, France. Thirty years on from Lindbergh the Russians reached orbit for the first time with Sputnik. Only four years later Yuri Gagarin comp