SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently released an ambitious plan to colonize Mars, finding a way to make his lifelong fetish of living on the Red Planet a reality.

Having accomplished everything from the founding of the online transaction service PayPal to making solar power and electrical automobiles mainstream, Musk stated that he is “ready for a new challenge.”

For years, Musk’s private astro-engineering venture SpaceX has been testing rockets, shuttles, and possible live-in solutions for Earth’s next-door neighbor in the decades to come. However, with NASA’s recent revelation that there are traces of flowing water on the Red Planet, Musk’s initial projections for colonizing the planet have been vastly accelerated.

“It’s really a fantastic discovery,” the modern-day Renaissance man explained excitedly. “It just solves so many of the problems that my team and I were facing!” He went on to explain that among such issues that might arise are the lack of breathable oxygen, a lack of usable resources, such as water, and the constantly looming threat of finding an alienated Matt Damon life form.

As of last month’s momentous discovery, at least one of those problems has been remedied.

“With the discovery of water on Mars, we at SpaceX think we’ve solved the issue of how to create a livable, breathable habitat for potential Mars pioneers,” Musk explains, “We’ll just build underwater!”

“We’ve been planning this for years,” the hopeful CEO went on to explain, “We actually already have an underwater testing facility at Cape Canaveral… It’s really cutting-edge stuff!” Musk and company have actually been playing with this idea for years, on the off-chance that NASA actually did discover water on Mars.

“It was definitely a gamble,” Musk admitted sheepishly. “But, as a result, I think that we’ve been pushed years ahead of where we would be otherwise… in terms of [interplanetary] colonization.”

As to who might have funded SpaceX’s secret underwater facility, the CEO refused to comment. However, financial analysts have been speculating about the involvement of innovators and philanthropists such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Meanwhile, online movie forums are betting based on the sub-marine aspect that director James Cameron is somehow involved.

However, Musk was quick to clarify that we’re still light-years away, so to speak, from actually being able to live on Mars.

“There’s a lot of math to do,” he explains. “A bunch of issues to figure out. It’ll take endless amounts of hard work and patience by some very talented individuals before we have any real picture of where we want this to go, or of how we want to get there.”

SpaceX is currently targeting a Spring 2017 launch for its first Mars colonization shuttle.

Written by: Connor Gorry