Elon Musk has already changed spaceflight by making reusability normal and resuscitating human exploration. His ambitious ideas encourage governments to aim bigger and his willingness to put his own funds where his mouth is demonstrates he is not a fool. But after 2025 things look grim. Technological problems like orbital refuelling, radiation protection and landing heavy payloads remain unsolved; economics are in the trillions so it’s a nation-state venture, not an individual one; and the legal frameworks like the Outer Space Treaty preclude single-sided colonization. Even Musk himself these days puts the timescale in the 2040s.