Yea, he only engineered and launched spacecraft into space. Not serious about SpaceX at all...

He what? He does "business", not engineering. His engineering decisions are notoriously bad, see the LiDAR vs camera discussions. He has no real expertise, beside compulsory lying and coming up with bold bullshit statements.

Spacecraft are one thing, Mars another. By the evidence, he is satisfied with where SpaceX and Tesla have got to. And, renewable energy generation and storage development and deployment.

Or maybe he wants to turn Twitter into a bully pulpit, and drive government spending where he thinks it should go... That's the 4D chess argument.

The significant ramping up of SpaceX production and work to add launch locations is a strong indicator that he’s not satisfied.

I don't think Elon needs or even could have any more of a bully pulpit than he already has.

He has a pulpit, but it is not bully.

>To me, the main message is that he wasn't really serious about Mars at all, or even about SpaceX, or Tesla -- never mind global climate catastrophe.

What are you talking about? He literally offered up the Tesla patents to anyone who wants to use them: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-y...

And:

>On June 12, 2014, Tesla announced that it will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use its technology. Tesla was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport, and this policy is intended to encourage the advancement of a common, rapidly-evolving platform for electric vehicles, thereby benefiting Tesla, other companies making electric vehicles, and the world. These guidelines provide further detail as to how we are implementing this policy.

https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...

I think there's a credible argument that SpaceX is not currently cash blocked. Same may apply for Tesla.

He may have just run out of good places to put it.

He could have put it into developing and deploying renewable energy development and deployment. So, no, that argument doesn't work.

It is possible he thinks he can use Twitter to drive politics, and maybe government spending, in directions he favors.

You're right about politics. The SpaceX Mars mission is ultimately tied up in NASA funding/approvals. Twitter is the hangout spot for the journalist profession. So even a slight manipulation of the algorithm could result in incalculable benefits to the Mars mission.

On the other hand, it's possible Musk is just getting revenge for Twitter censoring his friends at the Babylon Bee...

If your bar for "serious" doesn't allow for multi-tasking.

Money is fungible. Every single dollar that goes for Twitter is exactly a dollar that does not go for what he used to say was important.

He might be heard to say those again, but dollars speak louder than words. Musk can say anything, anytime. What he does with his money demonstrates what he believes.

By that same logic the US should immediately stop giving foreign aid to developing countries or investing in other programs since we still have homeless people here. The reasons why entities spend money on specific things is not a univariate. Also, there is a whole meta discussion to be had about what sparks creativity and innovation, I have a pet theory about over abundance of resources creating stagnation and dulling people's motivation and creativity. Beyond a certain point, throwing money at a problem can be counter productive.

At the end of the day, results matter and SpaceX has shown results.

"does not go for" 0 nope all of his share holdings are just that, holdings. It's not until he liquidates any of those shares that the money be put to work. In that way it doesn't matter he he shifts billions into twitter, he can liquidate it just the same. Probably for more given his track record pumping the value of companies.

If he owned 0% of both companies as CEO he could still achieve both goals.

Recipe for not thinking anything is important: split your holdings into two investments.

Recipe for thinking two things are equally important. If one of those is as intrinsically unimportant as Twitter, the other is too.

Maybe he sees twitter as a threat to his other goals? 'Whitey on Mars' could be very compelling to the twitter crowd.

Like it or not, Twitter is extremely important. It sets discourse and gets politicians into office. Remember how much Trump's tweeting dominated the news cycle? Elon buying Twitter isn't him saying he thinks it should be important, just that it is.

So, this is his entree into politics? A way to drive money at federal-government scale the way he wants?

Possible.