Will Elon Musk visit Mars in his lifetime?

The core question is not whether a Mars mission becomes possible, but whether Musk personally makes the trip. On that narrower standard, the biggest issue is the enormous amount of time and technical progress still required. Musk is now in his mid-50s, and even with a very long runway, a personal Mars visit still depends on Starship or some successor becoming reliably human-rated, reaching Mars repeatedly, and doing so on a timeline that aligns with his lifespan and physical ability. Public optimism helps keep the idea alive, but the history of repeated schedule slippage suggests that the gap between aspiration and actual transport capability remains very large.

There are still meaningful arguments for Yes. Musk has both the wealth and the organizational control to keep pushing toward Mars over many years, and he appears personally committed in a way that most would-be passengers are not. SpaceX has already built real launch capability and continues to advance Starship, which is at least directionally the right architecture for deep-space travel. If Mars settlement efforts do become real, Musk is exactly the type of founder who could choose to go as a symbolic, mission-defining act, especially if early crewed flights are framed as historic and high-profile.

Against Yes, the probability shrinks quickly once you factor in the practical bottlenecks. Mars colonization is likely to remain one of the hardest engineering and safety problems in human history, and a crewed landing is not the same thing as a safe, repeatable, personally acceptable visit. Musk would also have to decide to take an extreme personal risk late in life, and that willingness is not guaranteed even if the mission exists. The market’s 12% seems to reflect these realities; I think it is somewhat low because it may underweight his persistence and the long time horizon, but it is directionally reasonable because the base rate for any specific individual actually going to Mars is still very small.