1,000I asked Claude to apply the Edward Teach / Last Psychiatrist analysis:
Musk constantly announces things that don't happen on schedule. The Hyperloop. Full Self-Driving by 2017, then 2018, then 2019... The Tesla Semi. The Cybertruck (on time, finally, years late). The Mars colony timeline, perpetually receding. A normal reading treats these as execution failures, or optimistic bias, or deliberate stock manipulation.
But Teach would ask: why do his followers not only tolerate the missed deadlines but seem energized by them?
Because the announcement is the product, not the delivery. The fantasy being sold is not "Mars colony by 2026." It is "there exists a man for whom Mars colony by 2026 is a serious planning item." The repeated deferral doesn't undermine the fantasy — it sustains it. If the colony were actually built, the fantasy would end. The desire is not for Mars; the desire is for a world in which Mars is the kind of thing someone is trying to do.