Well, that's a crazy theory (but fun to think about). I don't think he ever believed that terraforming Mars would be achieved in his lifetime. It's not necessar

Well, that's a crazy theory (but fun to think about). I don't think he ever believed that terraforming Mars would be achieved in his lifetime. It's not necessary for a colony, and he always talked about "window" in which colonization can be started. Like, there are many things that can set our civilization back, like nuclear war, pandemics, meteors etc., and technical progress isn't guaranteed (we've been on the Moon on 60's and can't do that now), so his philosophy is that we must do it as soon as we can because at any moment we can lose that chance. And starting a colony without terraforming is of course better than not doing anything at all. I think his behavior is just the consequence of his wealth and success, of being literally at the top of the world in terms of money. And especially because his money comes from SpaceX and Tesla, both of which were considered crazy and impossible enterprises by most people (and there were many people people saying that it all will fail well before he became really famous and really rich). So I think he just started believing that since he was right with SpaceX and Tesla, and others were wrong (and he became the world's wealthiest person because he was right, so he was in a certain capitalistic way more right than literally everyone), he is right about everything and can do everything. And he was always kind of crazy. Politically I think that maybe his actions are somewhat calculated, maybe he's predicting that Trump will win and be more willing to finance crazy big missions to space? Right now Tesla isn't dependent on American environmental programs as much as it was before, and SpaceX is in a position in which they'll get government contracts forever, no matter who's in power, so he doesn't need to please the current government. And I think he was always more of a libertarian, so that checks out with many things he's saying. His "anti-war" views can also be explained by desire to minimize the risk of closing that window in which Mars colonization is possible.