Elon Musk, as a businessman, is primarily known for three of his many enterprises.

One is X, formerly Twitter, nowadays judged by investment giant Fidelity to be worth perhaps a quarter of what it cost him. Another is electric car maker Tesla, currently valued at almost five times the price of the next biggest car company. Neither X nor Tesla does anything that other companies can’t do.

But then there’s SpaceX and its subsidiary, Starlink. Founded 22 years ago, SpaceX has totally transformed the space launch industry. It makes more space launches than any other organisation and operates the 5,000-tonne Starship, the biggest and most powerful flying thing ever made by the human race.

SpaceX, however, is not a normal company, primarily in business to make a profit. Musk’s goal in establishing it was to build spacecraft capable of carrying human beings to Mars, as a necessary step towards human colonisation of the red planet.

“One path is we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some eventual extinction event,” Musk said in 2016. “The alternative is to become a multi-planetary species.”

His ambition may have moved a step closer to realisation with the election of Donald Trump, a candidate who Musk helped bankroll and who has now put him in charge of slashing red tape and government spending.