“This was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization.”

That was Elon Musk, super-hyped in his Trump inaugural rally victory speech. And he’s one hundred percent right.

The single most important thing that’s happening now, and that will unfold over the next several decades, is humanity’s transition from a planetary to an interplanetary species. (And, eventually, to an interstellar one.) And that’s tied to the election.

Had Trump lost, that might still have happened. Space policy over the last decade was surprisingly consistent across Republican and Democratic administrations. But I doubt it. The Harris Administration would have gone after Elon, out of pique for his purchase of X and wrecking of their global censorship plan if nothing else. He’s an extremely smart man, and has a lot of resources – he wisely made himself indispensable to the most powerful part of the Deep State on several fronts – but before the election I polled my Admin Law class and a substantial majority thought that Elon would wind up prosecuted and probably jailed if Harris won the election. This surprised me a bit, but I think that Elon thought that too and that it’s one reason he took an active hand in the campaign. And he was right to do so: While his companies would have survived his jailing, his vision probably wouldn’t have. It’s shared by people like SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell, who is as big a space fanatic as Elon (including the ”interstellar species” part) even though she’s considered something of a balance wheel for him, and it’s shared by many, many of his employees. But he’s the driving force. SpaceX without Elon would be like Apple without Steve Jobs – still around, still profitable, but . . . boring.