>>398341Mars is the real wildcard. On one level, ruling mars would be pointless. I truly believe that Elon Musk wants to become Emperor of Mars and claim it as his planetary kingdom. Accordin to the Outer Space Treaty, which entered force in 1967, nation states are from claiming celestial bodies, but *there is no such provision forbidding private individuals from doing so.*
He would rule over barren wastelands and windstorms, an empire of dust. Mars has tremendously rich ore deposits, though transporting it back to earth to trade in the earth economy would be negated by the costs of interplanetary freight. Also, the population scalability of Mars is very limited. Surviving there would be a great challenge, worse than any sort of frontier pioneering ever undertaken on earth. Most of all, to make Mars an attractive place to settle, it would have to be terraformed, a massive and unprecedented operation which also requires finding some means to remediate its electromagnetic field, a feat which is perhaps unknown to science and which certainly outstrips any of mankind's engineering knowlege. To say nothing of the logistics of this operation.
Mars therefore is really just a curiosity for the superfluously rich to prize and explore so that they can go down in history. Although I seriously do believe Musk wants to claim it as his own planet, he's that much of a prick. And he has an opening legally to do so.