Breaking News: Elon Musk will soon be headed to space in a big way.
No, it won’t be suiting up and climbing aboard one of his nifty SpaceX rockets. It certainly won’t be on his rival’s, Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin space transportation system. No. Nothing as mundane or weirdly predictable as that. This, my space race loving friends, is the real big cosmic leagues. Musk will be going where few men have gone before… Space… the final frontier…. *Cue that familiar music*
He’ll be joining Starfleet.
How, you ask? Why the hell not? I reply. It’s really not so truly farfetched. Afterall, these days the man seems to be doing everything else under the sun and stars. Yes, it’s most certainly happening - for our focused purposes anyway. In our little mental exercise simulation, he’ll become a full fledged Starship Captain, and warp off into the unknown.
But in exactly what era and on what Federation Starship will Musk be hailed as the top rocket man?
Enter The Kirk
The personality dynamic and command similarities are clearly seen between Elon Musk and James T. Kirk. It’s easy to see they’re both cut from the same space based cloth. These are two ultra confident men who rarely play by the rules. And when they do, the two men tend to break those rules regularly.
Gene Roddenberry created his sci-fi legend Star Trek with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) at the helm commanding a massively powerful Starship. Despite a planned five year journey, Kirk commanded the exploratory jewel of Starfleet for just three years, then came roaring back for more action packed adventures in seven feature films. Elon Musk is neither a real space traveller nor an actor, however, Musk deals in the future. In fact, in a real sense, you could say he’s helping to chart and even design the future. His Tesla cars are quickly becoming the gold standard for all-electric and self driving vehicles.
Despite Musk’s setbacks - the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the Tesla’s Autopilot Self Driving software - he always seems to land back on his feet and right back into the center seat of his own Captain’s chair. This, as any well informed Star Trek fan knows, is how Kirk himself operates in the future world of The United Federation Of Planets. Both rebellious and fiercely independent, but always somehow solves the problem. Kobayashi Maru, anyone?
Kirk may only be a fictional space explorer, warping about the galaxy in search of new lifeforms and new civilizations, but our own Elon Musk is as real as it gets. Just how much more will the Tesla CEO mirror the exploits of Trek’s most popular and well known starship Captain is anyone’s guess, but we can safely predict his moves will always keep us on our toes and guessing as to his next remarkable move.