My pet theory is that Elon Musk's talk about colonizing Mars is a recruiting ploy, allowing him to hire top tier rocket scientists relatively cheap because they believe in the mission.
What do you figure is the real motivation for SpaceX if not Mars? I think it’s a much worse business than Tesla if you don’t care about the SpaceX mission. Seems to be barely viable financially, while Tesla has healthy margins. Musk has used his Tesla wealth to support SpaceX, which makes him seem more like a believer to me.
SpaceX probably has a more or less guaranteed future as part of the military-industrial complex, and I think it's very likely that's Musk's actual vision - inroads into becoming the next Lockheed-Martin.
Remember that one of the very first Tesla investors, Mike Griffin, since way before a rocket engine had even fired, later became Trump's Undersecretary of R&D, and had previously been a high-ranking scientist of the Star Wars satellite missile defense program (and head of NASA).
Commercial launch provider. And particularly cornering the market for DoD launches, probably because he thinks that leverage will make him politically untouchable.
> Seems to be barely viable financially
They're betting big on reusable rockets, and so far it seems to be paying off. If they succeed in getting a fully reusable rocket flying several times a week, as they claim they can, the no other launch provider will be able to compete.
