SpaceX: Infinite wealth instead of infinite expanses

Huge upheavals usually begin with a utopia. Elon Musk presented one of the largest possible ones exactly ten years ago at a space conference in Mexico. For an hour he raved about a new type of rocket and how it could transform humanity into a "multiplanetary species": a civilization that lives not only on Earth but also on Mars, as a backup for global catastrophes. “I personally have no other motivation to accumulate wealth than to contribute to this goal,” Musk claimed at the time.

Musk's Mars utopia suddenly seems much more earthly. Ten years ago he praised Starship as the key to a multiplanetary humanity, and now the rocket reached orbit for the first time after 14 test flights, deploying satellites and demonstrating key steps toward reusability. The article describes Starship as a technical turning point because it could bring significantly more mass into space more cheaply and more frequently and thus fundamentally change space travel. At the same time, Musk shifted his priorities from Mars to the moon to Starlink, AI, global communications and military projects, making SpaceX a tech company with growing power in space. In the end, the text warns that Starship could increase commerce, geopolitical dependencies, space junk and military risks rather than fulfilling a utopia for everyone.