Let me open this with a statement: me being a business man, I never believe in full to what another business man is telling me. Musk is not an engineer, not a scientist, not a philanthropist; he's just an 100% pure, crystalline, extremely talented business man.
That being said, I guess all of us have read or heard about Musk's project to found a colony on Mars within 2024 (while I have to admit that I could not find this precise date written everywhere, he himself said that 2024 is a feasible possibility).
However, a bit of "history", below there are 3 videos from 2019, 2020 and 2021 about Musk's project (also look at the comments on the videos, they are interesting to say the least)
In case you are completely virgin about SpaceX Mars Program (as it is officially called), you can have a look at the Wiki page.
Here you can find SpaceX official website; I'd like to point your attention to how commercially oriented that page is, very good looking, but giving out not very strict data which were not simulations or opinions.
I'm very skeptic that SpaceX will manage to even be relatively close to that date, by that time they will still be trying to solve (or better to analyze in order to prevent) all the possible issues of actually travelling (and landing) on Mars, to the point that the actual discussion about efficiently* surviving on Mars won't be even fully started by then (at the least in practical terms). *I mean efficiently in the sense of being able to set up a colony that will last for years, not just landing there and leave after 15 days (and even this is far beyond the actual skills and possibility of anyone on Earth, included Nasa and SpaceX).
IMO, the great lie here is in considering Mars a relatively non-hostile environment, and that's BS, period. Quoting SpaceX's itself
No it isn't habitable and even surviving for 15 days will be a titanic challenge; no magnetosphere, no breathable atmosphere, severe temperature gap between day and night, planet wide sand storms... and those are just the main cons, ie even low gravity is an issue, because moving properly with a body that is 62% lighter that in Earth but with a badly distributed weight (due to the suit) will cause plenty of falls, and each of them is potentially lethal or anyway critic... but look at what SpaceX says about itWHY MARS?
At an average distance of 140 million miles, Mars is one of Earth's closest habitable neighbors. Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth is, so it still has decent sunlight. It is a little cold, but we can warm it up. Its atmosphere is primarily CO2 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, which means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere. Gravity on Mars is about 38% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around. Furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth.
Diameter 6,791 km / 4,220 mi
Day Length 24 hrs 37 min
Force of Gravity 38% of Earth
Avg Distance from Earth 225Mkm / 140Mmi
Age 4.5 billion year
or about temperatureGravity on Mars is about 38% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around.
lol if that's not pure commercial stuff...It is a little cold, but we can warm it up.
Furthermore
That's the only thing similar to Earth and totally the less important at all!Furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth.
If they had said in 2040, I would have considered this a concrete possibility.. but as it is now, this is essentially a huge commercial campaign, which main purpose for Musk is to experiment new technologies with the sole purpose of reusing and adapting them for Earth in a relatively short period of time.