This might surprise you but you can’t always take what people say at face value. You also have to think about why they say they want something and what else they might want. Mars is a great example of something he could fund himself, and something he presumably has funded in the past. So if he’s going to take government funding now when he’s holding the strings, it stands to reason that he’s taking advantage of his position. And you can see that play out with the $400 million dollar purchase of Cybertrucks for example where there are tons of more cost-effective tools for the job. So it seems like whatever he says his real goal is to strip-mine certain agencies for profit while he does it. Why would we trust him?

This might surprise you, but you have no idea what you are talking about.

You don't have to believe anything Elon says, just look at what he has done for the past 22 years. SpaceX was founded on the singular purpose of getting to Mars. Elon originally tried to buy ICBMs from Russia to launch to Mars, when that fell through he started his own rocket company. The entire tech stack and rockets being built are to reduce the cost of mass to orbit by the orders of magnitude needed to colonize mars. There is no other reason to build something as huge as Starship. Elon IS funding getting to mars by himself, the Starship program is mostly self funded, with the Artemis HLS contract coming well after the program was started.

He said his Tesla comp package was 100% to get to Mars for mankind then immediately bought Twitter when it hit the perf targets and he first got the package.

I'm really not just looking at what he says, but his actions over the last 20+ years, combined with the fact that starting a rocket company is not a particularly great way to become richer. It certainly hasn't made Jeff Bezos more rich.

I think what you're saying is that he is obsessed with Mars and is simply taking advantage of his position to fund this goal more and also massively profit. This I can understand and I think is a very real concern. I don't think it's what the poster I originally replied to is saying though.

Well, at one time he was obsessed with going to Mars... Now he seems more obsessed with being the most based twitter user and wrecking people's lives for upboats from his cronies.

If youre using the term “wokeness” seriously. You are not interested in a dialogue. You merely want to own the libs. Much of your comment history is defending Elon too and a lot of data driven replies to your past comments go seemingly unreplied by you

I don’t think you have any interest in an actual discussion here. You just want to signal youre right and the other party is wrong.

There are far more productive uses of your time then defending a stranger you’ll never meet. It’s a beautiful world out there. Please go enjoy it

If he is "obsessed" with that, why is he so disinterested in making progress towards it?

Can you elaborate on that? What do you think SpaceX is and what do you think Starship is? Legitimately curious to hear your reply

A way for him to suckle the udder of the tax payer and claim the glory of other people's labour and ability.

He has no interest in being able to control himself for years at a time, nor is he interested in solving the difficult problems of such a long deep space endeavour. If he were, then he'd be cooperative and disciplined, and try to make progress in this area.

So you're saying that SpaceX is all a government handout scheme, but that it also has produced glory?

Furthermore you're saying that since SpaceX isn't working on problems of habitation and deep space survival that he's not serious about Mars?

Is that right?

Is he? Obsessed people are generally hyper-focused on their obsession by definition, Musk has pivoted to electric cars, "free speech" and now re-shaping government since announcing his Mars ambitions.

He's definitely obsessed with being seen by others as the guy who's going to be the first to Mars, but I'd put it in the same camp as his obsession with being seen as an elite Path of Exile 2 player.

Consider it this way: it is absolutely a way to funnel money to his companies because he is (probably genuinely) obsessed with getting to Mars. More money for his companies means faster development of his technology, and the ability to do more in parallel. He knows this, of course. It doesn't matter if the reason for his greed is Mars, or just plain old greed.

Musk's position as CEO of SpaceX and head of DOGE is the most conflict-y of conflicts of interest when it comes to deciding what happens to NASA. It 100% doesn't matter if he is the truest of true believers in the need to make a settlement on Mars. We should not be giving him the power to dismantle other space-related efforts to fuel his personal project. Even if he is right at how critical Mars is, it is incredibly dangerous to allow people with conflicts of interest to be responsible for decisions on this scale.

See that position makes more sense to me, but I don't think that's what the post I originally replied to was saying. Maybe it is, but it didn't sound like it to me.

I think it’s the other way around. He is obsessed with Mars and now he has the influence to make it happen with the help of taxpayer money.

See this I can understand and I also think is true. I'm curious about folks who think Elon is hyping Mars as some money-making strategy. It seems like a really ineffective way to make money.