[the_duke]

Musk is actually a brilliant marketer. He built his companies around a "vision", used it to attract high quality talent and push that talent to give their best.

For Tesla it was "electrify transport to end dependence on fossil fuels and save the planet", for SpaceX it was "save humanity by becoming a multi-planetary species".

With how much he talked about it, he did probably actually believe in Mars.

But now both of these ideals have come into conflict with his newfound political affiliations, so they have to be dropped.

[ryandvm]

I don't know. I think the simpler answer is that Elon knows damn well that we're not colonizing Mars any time soon, but he also knows he could probably bag a few trillion if he can trick humanity into kicking off the biggest space boondoggle the world has ever seen.

[elcritch]

> he could probably bag a few trillion if he can trick humanity into kicking off the biggest space boondoggle

That makes no sense. You don't pick colonizing Mars as a get rich quick scheme. Also his seemingly genuine obsession has revolutionized space launch with Falcon 9's and internet connections with Starlink.

Not sure how either of those are space boondoggles. Even Starship is making huge progress towards something which could help make a moonbase a reality in the next few years.

[chistev]

> But now both of these ideals have come into conflict with his newfound political affiliations, so they have to be dropped.

How so? Do you mean Trump's refusal to accept Climate change?