Maye Musk Says Elon 'Really Wants' to Live on Mars While Promoting Her Own Candid New Memoir 'Timeless'

Maye Musk, the model and dietitian who is also the mother of Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, said in a new podcast appearance that her son harbors a genuine, long-term ambition to eventually live on Mars, offering a glimpse into what she described as his broader thinking behind SpaceX's mission.

Speaking on the Power Players podcast with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi, Maye Musk described her son's ambitions in direct terms. "I think he really would like to live in the city of Mars," she said. "That's what he's saying. But, you know, I can't say what's going on in his mind because he comes up with these amazing thoughts."

Maye went on to describe an earlier moment that she said illustrated the kind of reasoning behind her son's space ambitions more broadly, recalling a conversation about SpaceX's satellite technology. "When he said to me, 'I'm going to send satellites into space,' and I said why," Maye recounted, "he said, 'If you're stuck in the middle of an ocean or in the middle of a forest or on top of a hill and you are injured and you can't contact anyone, then you will die.' So he wants to prevent this."

The podcast appearance came as Maye Musk promotes her new memoir, "Timeless: The Art of Reinvention and Resilience at Any Age," which offers what she has described as a candid account of the personal hardships and career pivots that have shaped her life, from her early years working as a registered dietitian to her later, unlikely rise to prominence as a world-renowned model well into her 60s and 70s.

The book details Maye's experience navigating serious financial instability after leaving an abusive marriage to Errol Musk, Elon's father, and the years she spent raising her three children, Elon, Kimbal and Tosca, largely on her own as a working single mother while simultaneously building a private nutrition practice to support the family.

Maye Musk began modeling at age 15 in South Africa, balancing print campaigns with her academic studies at the time. She went on to earn two master's degrees, in dietetics and nutritional science, before eventually building a career that combined both her scientific training and her modeling work. Rather than fading from the industry as she aged, a common pattern in modeling, Maye's career experienced a second wind after she turned 60 and began embracing her natural silver hair, a shift that ultimately propelled her to a level of prominence in the industry that exceeded much of her earlier career. She went on to become a CoverGirl brand ambassador at age 69 and later appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue at age 74, milestones widely cited as breaking longstanding age barriers within the modeling industry.

Beyond discussing her own career and memoir, Maye Musk also addressed the public scrutiny that regularly surrounds her son, saying she believes much of the public misunderstands him, a perspective she acknowledged comes naturally from her position as his mother. She has become known for defending Elon publicly on social media platform X when she feels he is being unfairly criticized. "If you did have one [a kid] and somebody's insulting them when they're doing good, you would come down on them like crazy," Maye said. "I try to be as nice as I can, but you don't insult my kids."

Elon Musk's ambitions for Mars have long been central to SpaceX's stated mission, with the company founded in part around the long-term goal of making human life multiplanetary. SpaceX has continued advancing its Starship program in recent years as part of that broader ambition, with the vehicle intended to eventually serve as the primary spacecraft capable of transporting large numbers of people and cargo to Mars. Maye's comments offer a more personal, family-level window into how her son talks about that ambition privately, distinct from the more formal public statements Elon has made about SpaceX's mission over the years.

Maye's own career trajectory, marked by a series of significant reinventions across dietetics, single motherhood and eventually a second act in modeling later in life, forms the central narrative of "Timeless," which she has framed as a broader statement about the possibility of reinvention at any age rather than solely a memoir about her relationship with her famous children. Even so, her connection to Elon and his siblings, Kimbal, a restaurateur and entrepreneur, and Tosca, a filmmaker, remains a significant part of the public interest surrounding both the book and her media appearances promoting it.

With Elon Musk continuing to lead Tesla, SpaceX, X, the Boring Company and Neuralink, in addition to his earlier role co-founding PayPal, Maye's comments about his long-term Mars ambitions add to a growing public record of family reflections on what continues to drive one of the world's most closely watched entrepreneurs, even as SpaceX's own timeline for any eventual crewed Mars mission remains a subject of ongoing speculation and revision within the space industry.