NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

I can imagine SpaceX choosing to self-finance a mission to the moon and beat NASA at it.

> I can imagine

That probably does require some imagination. Starting with any incentive to do so.

Elon just said starship will do the entire moon mission:

“Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars

>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.

> Isn't the entire point of SpaceX to go to Mars?

What? No, it is to concentrate public wealth into the hands of one man.

No one forces anyone to buy Teslas stock to make the price high. If tomorrow Tesla goes bust, Elon’s 400B+ of “wealth” goes bust as well.

I wonder if there is something you can do with $500B but not with the $200B or so he has from SpaceX?

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.