Elon Musk wants to build Starfleet. No, really.
Last week at a SpaceX facility in Texas, he told a crowd that the whole point of his rocket company is to make Star Trek real. He wasn't just being nerdy. He was standing next to the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, calling for a literal Starfleet Academy to be built on American soil.
It’s easy to roll your eyes. Musk says a lot of things. But when you look at the stainless steel hulks of Starship prototypes sitting in the Boca Chica sun, you realize he isn't just a fanboy with a DVD box set. He’s trying to brute-force a 24th-century utopian vision into the 2020s.
Honestly, the connection between Musk and Trek goes way back. In Star Trek: Discovery, Captain Lorca actually name-drops Musk in the same breath as the Wright brothers and Zefram Cochrane (the guy who invents warp drive in the Trek timeline). That’s some high-tier canonization.
The Starship is Basically a Prototype Enterprise
If you’ve seen the interior concepts for the SpaceX Starship, they don't look like the cramped, switch-heavy cockpits of the Apollo era. They look like a bridge. Huge windows. Minimalist touchscreens.
SpaceX has basically ditched the "utilitarian gray" of NASA’s past for a sleek, sci-fi aesthetic.
Musk’s "Algorithm"—his five-step engineering process—is all about radical simplification. Step one: make the requirement less dumb. He’s obsessed with the idea that we shouldn't just be sending three guys in a tin can to the moon. He wants "epic, futuristic spaceships" that can carry 100 people at a time. That is a direct nod to the scale of the USS Enterprise.
But there’s a catch.
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In Star Trek, space travel is post-scarcity. They don’t have money. They have replicators. Musk’s version is... well, it’s expensive. He’s trying to solve the "money" part by making rockets reusable, like airplanes. If he can get the cost of a launch down to $10 million or less, then maybe, just maybe, we get closer to that Trek-like accessibility.
Making Starfleet Academy a Reality
When Musk talked about making Starfleet Academy real, he wasn't just talking about a school. He was talking about a mindset.
Star Trek is built on the idea that humanity stops fighting over borders and starts looking at the stars. Musk sees the current geopolitical mess and thinks the only way out is up. He’s pushing for the "Arsenal of Freedom"—a phrase he actually used during his Starbase speech—to be the foundation of a space-faring civilization.
It’s a bit of a weird mix. On one hand, you have the peaceful exploration of Captain Picard. On the other, you have the reality of defense contracts and Space Force satellites.
- The Vision: A multi-planetary species that doesn't go extinct.
- The Reality: Testing engines that occasionally blow up in spectacular "Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies."
- The Inspiration: Constant references to Vulcan salutes and warp cores in SpaceX internal culture.
What Trekkies Get Wrong About Musk
There’s a massive divide in the Star Trek community about Musk. A lot of fans think he’s more like a Ferengi—obsessed with profit and ego—than a Starfleet captain.
But talk to Vivek Wadhwa, a tech entrepreneur who’s known Musk for years. He recalls Musk talking about Star Trek and retiring on Mars over drinks back in 2012. Back then, everyone thought he was joking. He wasn't.
The nuance is that Musk isn't trying to build the social utopia of Star Trek yet. He’s trying to build the hardware. He figures if we don't have the ships, the philosophy doesn't matter because we'll all be dead from a climate collapse or an asteroid anyway.
It’s "Engineering First, Ethics Later" in a way that would make Commander Data tilt his head in confusion.
The William Shatner Connection
We can't talk about elon musk star trek without mentioning the actual Captain Kirk.
When William Shatner went to space on a Blue Origin flight (Jeff Bezos's rocket, not Musk's), Musk was surprisingly classy about it. He sent out a "Godspeed" tweet. But the irony wasn't lost on anyone. Shatner came back from space and talked about the "Overview Effect"—the profound sadness of seeing how thin our atmosphere is.
Musk’s response to that existential dread is usually: "Build more rockets."
He wants to turn that "thin blue line" into a bustling highway. He wants Starbase, Texas, to be the San Francisco of the future (where Starfleet HQ is located in the show).
How to Follow the "Trek-ification" of Space
If you want to see if we’re actually getting closer to a Star Trek future, don't look at the tweets. Look at the hardware milestones.
First, watch the Starship flight tests. Every time they successfully catch a booster or land a ship, the cost of reaching orbit drops. That is the "warp drive" of our era. Without cheap access to space, we stay stuck on Earth.
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Second, keep an eye on the Starlink constellation. It’s not just for better Netflix in rural areas. It’s a global communication grid that mimics the "subspace" networks in Trek. It’s the first step toward a unified planetary infrastructure.
Finally, pay attention to the Moon. With the Artemis missions and SpaceX's HLS (Human Landing System) contract, we are looking at a permanent lunar base by the end of the decade. That’s our first "Deep Space 9."
Actionable Next Steps:
To stay ahead of how this sci-fi reality is unfolding, track the 2026 launch window for the first uncrewed Starships to Mars. This window is the "make or break" moment for Musk’s interplanetary timeline. You can also monitor the progress of the Department of Defense's integration with SpaceX tech, as this will define whether our "Starfleet" looks more like a peaceful science mission or a militarized frontier.