The article breaks down how SpaceX ties Elon Musk’s pay to two massive goals—a self-sustaining Mars colony of one million people and orbiting data centers generating 100 terawatts—and then “works backward” through Starship, Starlink, Falcon 9 and lunar plans to show how each layer funds and enables the next. It also links Musk’s vision to Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels and lays out the energy, robotics, AI and launch-capacity prerequisites for a trillion-dollar, post-Earth civilization.

SpaceX is exploring the development of a Starlink-branded phone that would connect directly to its satellite constellation. Although details are still vague, Elon Musk has suggested that the device could be optimized for specific uses, such as running neural networks. Starlink is a significant revenue source for SpaceX, contributing to its overall financial success.