If Elon Wants to Colonize Mars, He'll Have to Overthrow the Race Communist Regime

To Do, or Not to Do

Note: This is something I originally got from Charles Haywood, in his review of a biography of Elon Musk. “Musk is the most likely candidate to break the Regime which rules us, simply because he must, in order to achieve his life goals, and he has the power (and probably the will) to do so,” Haywood wrote in February of 2024. It was not something I thought to be necessarily totally accurate at the time, but, having read more about the space environment and Elon himself, it’s something I’ve come to see as entirely accurate. So, using two biographies of Elon as a guide—Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance and Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson—I’ll explain why in this article. I’ll also review both books. If you find this article valuable, it would be hugely helpful if you could like it by tapping the heart at the top of the page to like the article; that’s how the Substack algorithm knows to promote it. Thanks again! Listen to the audio version of this article here:

[ADUIO] If Elon Wants to Colonize Mars, He'll Have to Break the Race Communist Regime

If there is one thing that guides everything Elon Musk has done since he sold his stake in PayPal, it is a desire to reach, explore, and settle Mars.

Rockets of the sort that SpaceX is now building—particularly Starship—will be necessary to send enough people and supplies into space to reach Mars at a cost-effective level. Solar panels of the sort built by SolarCity will be necessary for power once we’re there. Reliable and durable EVs of the sort Tesla is building will be necessary to get around Mars, as there are no fossil fuels. Quickly built, large tunnels like those The Boring Company constructs will make it far easier to build habitats for early settlers than the domed cities that will later come about. Humanoid robots like Optimus Prime, built by Tesla, along with advanced and mobile robots generally, will make maintaining such settlements and the solar fields on which they rely far easier. Starlink-type satellite fields will provide communications and internet infrastructure for the early settlers.

In short, everything that he is currently doing is something that will make settlement on Mars far more possible and much more likely to succeed.¹ He has figured out a way to make those projects profitable even without a Mars mission, but make no mistake: settling and eventually terraforming Mars into a lush and livable environment is very much his goal. As noted by Vance, visitors to the SpaceX headquarters “will find two giant posters of Mars hanging side by side on the wall leading up to Musk’s cubicle. The poster to the left depicts Mars as it is today—a cold, barren red orb. The poster on the right shows a Mars with a humongous green landmass surrounded by oceans.”

Elon himself has explained that achieving the vision represented by the two posters, turning what is now a cold and barren rock with no breathable atmosphere or soil suitable for growing food into a relative paradise, is what he sees as the purpose of his very existence. Vance notes:

Turning humans into space colonizers is his stated life’s purpose. “I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future,” he said. “If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet—to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness—then,” and here he paused for a moment, “I think that would be really good.”

It is toward this purpose that he has poured his life and soul, making it the “unifying principle over everything he does.”² He even tends toward avoiding philanthropy because he knows he can achieve more by keeping his wealth and companies intact rather than sacrificing it all on the altar of fish nets for Africa.³

SpaceX did what most thought impossible and became the first private company to reach orbit. It then did what was thought even more impossible, creating rockets that can reliably land and be reused. Yet more impressively, it did so while creating them as part of a profitable space operation that churns out advanced rockets like cars.⁴ Now it is building Starship, another monumental feat of drive and engineering that has more lift capacity than the Apollo mission’s Saturn V rockets and is also reusable.

Tesla has overcome similar challenges, becoming the first domestic car company in nearly a century to be a success; before it, the last successful start in the car industry was Chrysler, in 1925. It now churns out at an industrial scale EVs that can drive themselves, does so more profitably and efficiently than any legacy automaker, and is essentially the only car company to still be as vertically integrated as possible. SpaceX also makes its own materials rather than relying on a bevy of subcontractors who do the hard work for it.

None of that was easy. It was all difficult beyond belief, in fact, hence why everyone told him not to do it. Yet, by sheer force of will and genius of mind, he has made it a success.

The next step, however, will be even more difficult: to settle Mars, Elon will not just be staring down legacy companies, but the entire regime. He’ll have to overcome the “Great Society” spirit that is the reason we never got to the Red Planet in the first place. Further, he will have to do so at his own initiative, with his own resources, in the face of a spiteful and slothful world ruled by bureaucrats who hate him and everyone like him. To get to Mars, he’ll have to break the back of our race communist regime.

What He Must Overcome

While you might think that America would be all on board with space exploration and settlement, given that it only exists because brave men had the temerity to do just that in the 16th and 17th centuries, it is not.

Instead, we are signatories to the treaty banning such exploits—the Outer Space Treaty (OST). For that, we have President Lyndon B. Johnson, who is also the reason that welfare programs were allowed to take precedence over conquering the stars, to thank. Two sections of it are particularly problematic for Elon, Articles I and II. They provide, as Pirate Wires noted in a recent article:⁵

ARTICLE I, paragraph 1

The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.

ARTICLE II

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

There are other problems for Elon as well. For example, Article IX provides, “In the exploration and use of outer space […] States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose.”⁶ What that means is that no real settlement can legally occur under the OST, as we are to pretend that the dead and irradiated regolith of space is sacred.

In short, the global bureaucracy has destroyed every incentive that might have encouraged continued space exploration, and led to the settlement of it⁷ or the exploitation of its resources.⁸

Yet worse, Article VI of the OST provides that nations “bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space”, including both Mars and activities engaged in by “non-governmental entities”.⁹ Thus, America would be required under its treaty obligations to stop Elon from putting settlements on Mars, terraforming it, or doing anything of similar value in space. While that might not be an issue under a friendly administration, it would give a hostile one legal justification to start seizing his assets and suing him into oblivion.

There is something of a saving grace. Thanks to the Trump Administration’s efforts in 2020, an update to the OST called the Artemis Accords provides that “the extraction of space resources does not inherently constitute national appropriation under Article II of the Outer Space Treaty.”¹⁰ So, were a private company like SpaceX to make it to Mars or land on an asteroid and start harvesting the valuable minerals within it, that could be legal.

However, a Martian settlement would still be extremely legally risky.¹¹ That is particularly true given that even if one administration were to give him the green light under the Artemis Accords for such a project, the next administration could “reinterpret” the law and America’s obligations under it to seize everything he has built, both on Earth and in the heavens. As America’s constantly shifting governments and ideological incoherence make us generally regarded as “agreement non-capable”,¹² such a legal “rugpull” is perhaps the most likely outcome.

What’s more, the bureaucracy has already shown it is willing to go to legal war with Elon purely to spite him and prevent him from accomplishing great things.

The Bureaucracy’s Spite

Most of us realized that the US government was (seemingly) bizarrely at war with SpaceX rather than working with it to ensure America dominates space access when the Biden DOJ sued it for not hiring enough refugees.¹³ Of course, it did so not because it is necessarily important that Haitians who eat mud cookies be in charge of building the rockets that ensure the military has space access capabilities; hiring the non-Americans it was told to hire probably would have been illegal under American law.¹⁴ Rather, Biden’s DOJ did so as a weaponization of the law against Elon to punish him for his political dissent.¹⁵

But while that incident was horrifying, it wasn’t the only example. For example, a judge in Delaware stole $55 billion from him for vague reasons of “equity”.¹⁶ She overruled a contract, the Tesla Board of Directors, and the majority of Tesla shareholders to arrive at her ridiculous decision. Similarly, the Biden SEC harassed him for buying Twitter,¹⁷ and he has faced repeated lawsuits for helping Trump win in Pennsylvania.¹⁸

His woes are not confined to America. The EU just mugged X like it has mugged other American tech companies, stealing $140 million for the obvious purpose of punishing Elon for being a political dissident.¹⁹ Similarly, the Europeans have also used “harassment” claims from a transgender boxer to launch lawfare attacks on him for being a dissident in culture war matters.²⁰

Musk has done little more to disagree with the regime than tentatively back a mainstream political party and candidate. Yet he already faces the theft of his rightful property and a slew of regime-backed lawfare attacks. That will get worse if he does something great—such as send a colony to Mars—that they deem to be in conflict with the egalitarian spirit of our age and thus needing to be punished.

In fact, the grey and suffocating bureaucracy will want to stop him from the very act of trying to settle space at all, for the reason such a project was originally destroyed: doing great things is “wasteful” compared to dumping endless resources into the favela.

As one regime economist named Smil told Vance, “The last thing a country with 50 million people on food stamps and 85 billion dollars deeper into debt every month needs is anything to do with space…”²¹ In other words, the favela must be forever subsidized before we can do anything great and exceptional. That race communist orthodoxy is widely believed on the left generally and even in many spheres of the supposed right, meaning it is an impulse likely to be acted on.

So, the regime might strangle Musk’s Mars mission not only because it is deeply committed to the OST or abhors his political dissidence, but merely because it doesn’t think the mission is worth pursuing. The anti-achievement bureaucracy would be the natural means by which such punishment would occur.

And all of the reasons that Elon might clash with the bureaucracy that rules the Occident are exacerbated by the fact that the way he operates and runs his companies clashes with the very nature of what it means to be a bureaucrat. As Vance notes, in a telling story:

Musk . . . did remember other confrontations with the FAA. One time he compiled a list of things an FAA subordinate had said during a meeting that Musk found silly and sent the list along to the guy’s boss. “And then his dingbat manager sent me this long e-mail about how he had been in the shuttle program and in charge of twenty launches or something like that and how dare I say that the other guy was wrong,” Musk said. “I told him, ‘Not only is he wrong, and let me rearticulate the reasons, but you’re wrong, and let me articulate the reasons.’ I don’t think he sent me another e-mail after that. We’re trying to have a really big impact on the space industry. If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.

“There is a fundamental problem with regulators. If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they could easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don’t even get a reward. So, it’s very asymmetric. It’s then very easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. It’s because there’s a big punishment on one side and no reward on the other. How would any rational person behave in such a scenario?”

Elon is naturally at war with our race communist regime. Particularly, he is in an existential and ultimately unavoidable conflict with the bureaucracy, as it puts “safety” and “equity” first, and accomplishment last. Such has occurred at a national scale before: the South Africa that Musk left has fallen into such a pit of race communism-driven non-accomplishment. As John Carter put it on X, “South Africa once had a space program. Now it barely has a functioning power grid. As the long night of racial darkness deepens, high technology begins to disappear. Step by step things become more primitive. Eventually indoor plumbing is a myth of the lost Golden Age.”²²

As Elon not only escaped the hell that is South Africa but wants to do what the bureaucratic, race communist regime seems bent on using any legal or moral justification imaginable to make impossible, he will naturally find himself in an existential war with it as the Mars mission approaches. Because of who he is and what he can do, that does not mean that’s the end of the matter, however.

Cutting the Bureaucracy-Constructed Gordian Knot

The One Man Who Can Cut the Knot

If there is one thing Elon is known for, it is being utterly relentless once he decides on something. As his ex-wife, Justine, told Vance: “He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It’s Elon’s world, and the rest of us live in it.”

What’s more, he can make decisions with immense and far-reaching consequences in a flash. As one engineer told Vance: “One of my favorite things about Elon is his ability to make enormous decisions very quickly. That is still how it works today.” He studies the issues deeply beforehand, and knows enough to make informed decisions about a dizzying array of incredibly complex subjects. Then, when the time comes to act, he acts. He doesn’t retreat into the refuge of decision avoidance-driven further study.

Paired with that lack of emotional decision-making is a lack of emotion generally, something that enables him to cut through to the objective rather than putting up with emotional blackmail. The classic case of him showing as much was when, in the wake of his secretary complaining about not having enough vacation time, he told her to “take a couple of weeks off, and he would take on her duties and gauge how hard they were.” As could be expected, he found the duties weren’t onerous, and so he let her go.²³

Adding to all of that is the fact that Elon has a stable of loyal executives and engineers behind him, contrary to public perception of ceaseless turnover and turmoil within his companies.²⁴ Further, the very nature of what his companies do allows him to constantly recruit the cream of America’s engineering crop. As Peter Thiel noted to Vance, “[Elon] has the most talented people in the aerospace industry working for him, and the same case can be made for Tesla, where, if you’re a talented mechanical engineer who likes building cars, then you’re going to Tesla because it’s probably the only company in the U.S. where you can do [interesting things].”²⁵ That loyalty and enthusiasm amongst the best and brightest survives even his sometimes acerbic personality, as the work and what Elon manages to accomplish through it are so incredible and worth being part of.²⁶ Because that loyalty is built on competence and victory rather than going along with emotional blackmail, it’s of the durable sort that could survive a fight with the bureaucracy.

All in all, that makes Elon the sort of person who could do what no great man of the West yet has: stand up to the suffocating bureaucracy and end its torpor-inducing rule.

Such came up in the wake of his purchase of Twitter/X, as Isaacson recounts. Following his awakening to the dangers posed by the modern left that came with his Marxist son’s decision to “transition”,²⁷ he realized that the present regime would make his dream impossible, saying: “Unless the woke-mind virus . . . is stopped, civilization will never become multiplanetary.”

That then led to his increasing political involvement, first with the Republican Party generally and then with buying Twitter. Once in charge, he quickly realized that nearly the entire base of employees was utterly rotten and had to be fired. So, he set about rooting out the bad ones so that they could be let go. The HR bureaucrats immediately tried to stop him by demanding that he let them vet the lists of to-be-fired employees for “diversity”.

Musk refused to abide by their disparate impact games. Instead, pushed forward with his dramatic change of pace for the company by firing half X’s employee base and 90% of some teams on one day, shutting off their computers and emails as he did so.²⁸ All of that occurred by November 3, with Musk only having taken over on October 27.

And he didn’t end there. Pressing forward with the plan, he went on to fire about 75% of the overall employee base, slashing the company from ~8,000 to ~2,000 employees. By the time he was done, he had fundamentally changed Twitter. As Isaacson describes it:

Musk had wrought one of the greatest shifts in corporate culture ever. Twitter had gone from being among the most nurturing work-places, replete with free artisanal meals and yoga studios and paid rest days and concern for “psychological safety,” to the other extreme. He did it not only for cost reasons. He preferred a scrappy, hard-driven environment where rabid warriors felt psychological danger rather than comfort.

Were he to have listened to the bureaucrats who thought they were in charge, it would have all been over. His reforms would have been drowned in the muck and mire of HR-imposed red tape regarding “diversity” and “equity”. Instead, he told them to get lost and fired all the losers who had ruined Twitter, entirely remaking the organization in a space of weeks and ending the DEI-based anti-white discrimination at the company. The success of X that ensued thus stands as a testament to what is possible when the bureaucracy and those who benefit from it are trodden underfoot.

Elon’s Coming War with the Stifling Bureaucracy

That sort of Gordian knot-cutting is what will be required of him with the OST, Mars, and his dream of turning the Red Planet green.

He has said he will, if necessary, just ignore the OST and do what he wants on Mars.²⁹ While a good impulse, that will mean much more than he indicates it means. Because the present bureaucracy that rules us and race communist ideology that serves as its lodestar is the foundation of our present regime, ignoring it to settle Mars will mean overthrowing the powers that be and their minions.

If he wants to build settlements on Mars, claim that settled territory as his, and terraform it to turn it habitable…then he will be in direct conflict with all of the OST. The American government will be responsible for stopping him, which some administration will eventually attempt. After all, the ruling bureaucracy already sees him as a threat as a dissident and wants to stop him, and that impulse will only increase as he becomes ever more prominent, beloved, and powerful by succeeding in every realm in which the regime has failed—which is to say every realm imaginable.

Thus, as Rhodesia was destroyed for being exceptional and excellent, Musk and his projects will face the same threatened fate. Already the vultures are circling, already the message is being pushed that space exploration and colonization are “extravagant”, “wasteful”, and “irresponsible” in the face of the global favela’s need for an ever greater share of our resources, and so ought be stopped in the name of equity.

It cannot have him standing as an example of the fact that, in the absence of the egalitarian rot of our age, great things can still be accomplished. In the eyes of the regime, Elon cannot be the lesson Rhodesia was, a reminder of the alternative that exists and the great rewards in prosperity, spirit, and quality of life that come with rejecting the false god of equality.

And so stopping Musk is what the global race communist regime is mobilizing around doing, and will try to do when it comes down to it.

Preventing that will not be a small or easy thing. It will be a titanic clash of existential import, with either Musk winning and cutting the Gordian red tape or the bureaucracy strangling him and his dreams with it. Given that Musk is the man who has won against all the odds time and time again,³⁰ he has a good chance of winning that struggle. How he might do so is beyond the scope of this article, though The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is probably as good a prediction as any; space is and forever will be the high ground, after all.

The specifics of how that fight might be waged, when it will happen, or what the exact spark will be are relatively unimportant. What is important is that the fight is coming. Elon, in his excellence and his accomplishments, has shown himself to be an alternative to the equity regime. He has rejected the spirit behind why the Space Age ended, and stands as a testament to what is possible in the absence of it and the bureaucracy that enforces it. As shown with Rhodesia, and shown with the attacks on him that have already begun, that can’t and won’t be tolerated. And so the Ragnarok reckoning is coming, and either Mars will be colonized or the Global Favela will win again.

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