This first article is from just shy of a decade ago in 2016:
In perhaps the most eagerly anticipated aerospace announcement of the year, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has revealed his grand plan for establishing a human settlement on Mars.
In short, Musk thinks it’s possible to begin shuttling thousands of people between Earth and our smaller, redder neighbor sometime within the next decade or so. And not too long after that—perhaps 40 or a hundred years later, Mars could be home to a self-sustaining colony of a million people.
…
Though he admitted his exact timeline is fuzzy, Musk thinks it’s possible humans could begin flying to Mars by the mid-2020s.
Nadia Drake
Elon Musk: A Million Humans Could Live on Mars By the 2060s (National Geographic)
Was there ever any chance for Elon Musk to achieve that goal? Here are two more recent articles that claim he never had a chance. The first addresses engineering problems with SpaceX’s Starship. The second looks at the feasibility of anyone actually living on Mars.
This is why Starship, in my opinion, is just one massive con.
That is the real reason why Starship was doomed to fail from the beginning. It’s not trying to revolutionise the space industry; if it were, its concept, design, and testing plan would be totally different. Instead, the entire project is optimised to fleece as much money from the US taxpayer as possible, and as such, that is all it will ever do.
Will Lockett
Starship Was Doomed From The Beginning (Planet Earth & Beyond)
Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let’s discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth.
Albert Burneko
Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars (Defector)
Scott Boehmer 