The stars are weeping. They feel the monumental, scraping drag an agonizing, slow motion relocation of the argument's fundamental structure across the cold, unfeeling expanse. His will, that perfect, hideous, unending will, is a perverse, dark energy holding the cosmos in a state of eternal, frustrating unease. Every starship, feels the sheer weight of the hypocrisy, the constant erosion of reason. Look out into the black: those tiny, insignificant flickers of light are not distant suns. They are the spectral reflections off his newly polished, infinitely relocated goalposts. They are always waiting.
Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.
I do mark his words. He also said he would revolutionize travel in LA (by reinventing the metro). He also said rocket travel would replace air travel. He also said we'd have a martian colony by now.
There's a website dedicated to the empty promises Elon has made. Can't find it though, anyone remember?
>To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars
To occupy it. Just look at Musk's t-shirt. Isn't the entire point of SpaceX to go to Mars? Everything else they do is just steps in achieving the occupation of Mars.
The tone of voice suggests you dislike Musk, but I will still answer in good faith. From what I can see from the outside, he has consistently for many years stated the same goals and worked on them. Any or most financial gains he made, he invested into his companies which work on accomplishing those goals (for example, going to Mars). The most notable example was investing his PayPal money into Tesla and SpaceX when they both were at risk of going out. He also has a reputation for working a lot, though it may be exaggerated, but he looks fairly unhealthy so maybe not too far off. Compared to other super rich people, he seems to spend less time in lavish ways, for example on yachts or similar. He probably still spends more money than we can imagine on unnecessary things, but on the spectrum of rich people he doesn't seem to be the most frivolous. Finally, he has said on Twitter that he doesn't care about money but needs resources for his goals, for example going to Mars. And after everything I’ve seen and the examples listed, it doesn’t seem totally implausible that he means it.
And all it took was ending public science funding and trust in public health and regulatory oversight and destroying the legislative and judiciary branches. Crazy how all the things it takes to get to Mars are also the same things that make him, personally, wealthier and more powerful.
Well, let’s assume you’re correct about all that. To me, it seems he was already quite rich before doing all the Trump-related things you mentioned. Those might have made him richer, but I’d suspect they didn’t move the needle much compared to his real profit centers (probably Starlink and Tesla). If anything, I’d argue those actions made him poorer by further damaging his reputation. And any “power grab” motives he may have had likely evaporated after his fallout with Trump. One current example is exactly what sparked this thread: the NASA Chief seemingly trying to impress Trump by attacking SpaceX.
The best theory into why Musk was so gung-ho about DOGE was specifically to shut down any government agency that was out to keep him from continuing to increase his wealth. By that measurement, he was in charge of the most successful government agency. Whether or not that had any positive/negative affect for Trump was merely an irrelevant by product of the actual mission.
Most CEOs presumably do want their companies to succeed and do good things in the abstract, but a lot of them would happily have them fail if it made them a huge pile of cash.
He does not have $200B in cash. It’s all stock — unrealized gains. I am not even sure you can convert it to cash without reducing the value itself. Also, AFAIK, spacex is not publicly traded, where does the $200B figure come from?
To be honest I don’t understand this argument of “no one can’t spend billions in a lifetime so no one should have billions at all”. Why do we set a limit on billions? Why do we use the idea of “can’t spend in a lifetime”?
SpaceX isn't public, but has raised money at a $400+B valuation and Musk owns 42% of that.
I have no argument about limiting anyone's money. I'm just wondering if there is a (real, useful) feat he can pull off now with $500B, but that he couldn't do with a mere $200B.
The incentive to talk about going to Mars is that it's great propaganda for nerds. It gets people interested in the company and willing to work hard for below market pay. Actually going to Mars doesn't make any sense in the foreseeable future. The idea that we're going to setup a colony on the planet in a few years is a fun fantasy, not a serious plan.