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Elon Musk addressed a crowd at a Texas SpaceX facility, telling listeners about the “purpose of SpaceX.” That purpose, it turns out, is to “make ‘Star Trek’ real.”
“We want to make Starfleet Academy real, so that it’s not always science fiction—but one day, science fiction turns into science fact,” Musk told the gathered crowd.
The speech comes just days before the new “Star Trek” series, titled “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” premieres on Paramount+.
Musk gave a short presentation at the SpaceX facility before passing the mic over to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The SpaceX founder walked out to a podium reading “THE ARSENAL OF FREEDOM” as the song “No More Mr. Nice Guy” by Alice Cooper played in the background.
“We have spaceships going through space — big spaceships — with people going to other planets, going to the Moon and ultimately going beyond our star system to other star systems where we may meet aliens or discover long-dead alien civilizations,” Musk said. “I don’t know, but we want to go, and we want to see what’s happening, and we want to have epic, futuristic spaceships with lots of people in them traveling to places we’ve never been to before.” You can watch the clip below.
The hypothetical spaceships aren’t the only things Musk called “epic” in his speech. The controversial figure welcomed the crowd to Starbase, TX — formerly known as Boca Chica Village or Kopernik Shores of Cameron County, TX — before beginning his speech.
“This is a city — it’s actually legally a city — that, thanks to the hard work of the SpaceX team, we built out of nothing and is now a gigantic rocket manufacturing system,” Musk said. “For people out there who are curious to see it, we’re actually on a public highway, so you can come and visit and drive down the road and see the epic hardware.”
Musk spoke about how the factory, which he gave a tour of to Hegseth and senior Pentagon leadership prior to the presentation, represents the manufacturing that is “critical to the strength of America” before transitioning into his “Star Trek” analogy.
“That’s the goal,” Musk laughed before passing the mic to Hegseth. “And that’s what I think the public thinks of Space Force.”
