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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has long heavily relied on selling science fiction to investors.<\/p>\n
He wants to pollute our planet\u2019s orbit \u2014 already brimming with junk \u2014 with gigantic orbital data centers<\/a>. Then, he wants to settle on the surface of the Moon<\/a>. Ultimately, he wants to make humanity an interplanetary species by building a city on Mars<\/a> with the help of an enormous fleet of Starship spacecraft, leaving a planet reeling from a climate crisis behind.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the kind of lofty \u2014 and, according to his many critics, delusional \u2014 thinking that turned him into an (almost) trillionaire<\/a>. And, as SpaceX continues to struggle<\/a> selling investors on Musk\u2019s lofty imagination, the mercurial CEO is already conjuring new visions to keep the hype train chugging. According to a recent tweet<\/a>, he believes that \u201cSpaceX will be worth more than the rest of Earth if we accomplish our goals.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk was responding to one of his supporters questioning<\/a> SpaceX\u2019s recent AI compute deal with Anthropic<\/a>, arguing that it was giving too much money to a competitor.<\/p>\n To Musk, it all comes down to our ability to fully harness the power of the Sun. As illustrated by the Kardashev scale<\/a> \u2014 a method devised by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev that measures a civilization\u2019s level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it can channel \u2014 Musk believes we\u2019re not even close to unlocking our full potential as a species.<\/p>\n By utilizing all that untapped solar energy, Musk thinks SpaceX could eclipse the Earth\u2019s entire GDP of around 100 trillion dollars<\/a> \u2014 if you\u2019re willing to entertain his outrageously lofty vision, that is.<\/p>\n Back in January, Musk argued<\/a> that \u201cspace-based industries will vastly exceed the value of all of Earth, given that you could harness roughly 100,000 times more energy than Earth and still be using less than a millionth of the Sun\u2019s energy!\u201d<\/p>\n Skeptics will differ. He also claimed<\/a> that \u201cdue to autonomy, Tesla is worth more than the rest of the auto industry,\u201d while his EV maker\u2019s struggling Optimus robot will increase \u201cEarth GDP by an order of magnitude.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the kind of wishful thinking his entire business empire is teetering on top of lately. For years now, tech leaders have been trying to sell us on a utopian \u201cage of abundance<\/a>,\u201d in which manual labor is a thing of the past and everybody enjoys a high standard of living.<\/p>\n However, reality tells a dramatically different story. Despite Musk\u2019s repeated promises for over a decade<\/a>, in one telling example, Tesla vehicles are still far from reliably driving themselves without constant oversight.<\/p>\n Even investors are having trouble buying into his dreams of training AI models from space. SpaceX\u2019s shares initially rallied following a blockbuster IPO last month, but have been in decline ever since. The muted enthusiasm highlights persistent doubts over a multitrillion dollar valuation for a company that lost a staggering $5 billion last year.<\/p>\n In short, his claim that SpaceX will somehow become worth more than the entire global economy should be taken with an astronomical amount of salt.<\/p>\n It also assumes that SpaceX is operating within a vacuum. Considering the major strides<\/a> China\u2019s space program is making<\/a> as of late, that\u2019s far from a given.<\/p>\n