Elon Musk is not a fool and everybody in the space community knows that he is not really working on a colony on Mars.

Then why does he say so? The NASA has understood after Apollo that huge budgets require large political support, hence huge public opinion support.

Going to the Moon has cost 4% of the US budget during 15 years or so.

The world space community knows that humans do badly in space in general ; Mars is no better because of cosmic rays. A colony on Mars would have to be underground. In fact, the whole space community knows that robots are much more efficient and far, far less costly.

The International Space Station has a shallow bottom line in terms of Science, beyond the effects of lack of gravity on humans. I discussed of these effects with the official physician of an European astronaut: it's quite worse than publicly acknowledged. It's not a secret, it's just that journalists don't really do their job on the issue. They would not need to "investigate" in a Watergate way but just to circumvent the press departments of NASA and/or ESA in Europe.

The public opinion wants the dream. The NASA has heavily invested in filming and sharing the expeditions. And they are great at it.

In Europe, Thomas Pesquet is the incarnation of ESA: good-looking, super bright, truly a nice guy by nature, communicative enthusiasm... We all like him. But it would be fun if a journalist calculated the science / communication ratio of his time aboard the ISS. Something like 20% maybe and only because he needs to have something to talk about. Otherwise a robot could have conducted the experiments. Except for the experiments on his own body but... what for, since there is no scientific nor technical rationality for humans in space anymore?

But sending humans instead of robots implies a tenfold budget. So the dream of humans in space / on Mars / on the Moon is vital to maintain a large space industry.

The proof of this is... SpaceX. They do better than NASA and ESA for a fraction of the cost.

But SpaceX has an issue here: NASA, ESA and other space agencies are... its clients. SpaceX wants deep-pocketed clients. So SpaceX must participate in fuelling the dream of humans in space.

The ISS is old now and we have seen it all. The movie "Gravity" was great but also the coffin of space stations orbiting Earth. It's a bit like car races: for most people, me included, we only watch... if there is an impressive accident, on YouTube. On TV, following a car race is just a bore. Another live feed from the ISS? Well... who cares? Thomas Pesquet did super well the last five years, exploiting the ISS to its maximum. To fuel the dream.

So, what's next? The storytelling around robots on Mars surface was a great success. Rosetta and the comet was super exciting too. But we are used to it now... However NASA made a brilliant stunt of the tiny helicopter on Mars: first fly on another planet. I loved it. The Webb telescope... well super interesting for Science and technology guys like us here but for the public opinion... It's just OK. Children don't care for example and it tells a lot. And it's only a 10 billion-dollar project. The ISS amounts to 140 billions.

So what's next for maintaining the over-large space industry? A base on the Moon. That's realistic. And SpaceX rockets will enable it.

But Elon Musk can not been seen as a mogul so influential that a inhabited base on the Moon is budgeted. If he was on TV all the time selling us a Moon base - which is what he really wants - he would be stealing the dream sold by his own clients.

The NASA wants to be again the center of attention like during Apollo. And to get the hundreds of billions it needs. SpaceX? Just an efficient commodity provider in the dream, transportation.

But Elon Musk wants his share of attention too. He can't focus his communication on the Moon base? Let's invent a colony on Mars!

Everybody is happy: it promotes the humans in space, Musk is the dreamy visionary and the NASA... the much more responsible governmental agency with a rock-solid and reasonable project of a base on the Moon.

And, oh boy, press, media and social networks just keep on talking about Musk's Mars colony, endlessly.

Elon Musk has no project of a colony on Mars. He is enabling the NASA moon base, helping his client to get the hundred of billions it requires... SpaceX has rockets to sell and a rocket require a client with a need to send big payloads into space.

Robots are fun... for a while. Humans in space? A never-ending dream: Star Wars and Star Trek have been proving it for 50 years. Robots? Well, there was Wall-E.

Humans in space : tens of billions of dollars per year for the next fifty years. Everybody is happy in the space community.

It will certainly result in technological leaps. But for Science? Robots are better and much much cheaper.

Too cheap in fact. This is true for all space agencies around the world. China wants a manned space station to demonstrate that they are closing the gap with the USA and Russia. Purely technological and proof of power, not a scientific project.

Musk is also creating his own market by sending tens of thousands of satellites around Earth. Space observation from Earth will mechanically become problematic if not unfeasible.

And it happens that SpaceX has the rockets for installing telescopes on the dark side of the Moon. An old dream of scientists, since this is the best possible area for telescopes. But scientists have not been able to get the budgets for it. Don't worry, Musk is paving the way to get them, by privatizing the sky.

Google needs to invade our privacy to get going. SpaceX needs clients for its rockets. In a sense, Musk had to invent this bullshit colony on Mars. He needs to fuel the dream.