Elon Musk leaned into one of space history’s strangest coincidences, joking "As foretold in the prophecy" after a passage from rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun’s late-1940s Mars fiction resurfaced online describing the elected leader of a future Martian government as "Elon."
Von Braun’s Fiction Featured Leader Called ‘Elon’
The viral post said von Braun had weirdly "predicted" Musk nearly 80 years ago. The actual passage is less supernatural but still striking, stating, "The Martian government was directed by ten men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and entitled ‘Elon.’"
In von Braun’s story, "Elon" was a political title, not a person’s name. Two houses of parliament made laws, while the Elon and his cabinet administered them. The Council of Elders, its upper chamber, had 60 lifetime members.
The timeline also needs a caveat. Social-media posts commonly date the manuscript to 1948, but the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum says von Braun completed the German novel in mid-1949. Publishers rejected it, and the full work appeared only in 2006 as ‘Project Mars: A Technical Tale‘. Its technical appendix was separately published in English in 1953 as ‘The Mars Project‘.
Von Braun later became central to the U.S. space program after helping develop Nazi Germany’s V-2 ballistic missile. At NASA, he led work on the Saturn V rocket used for the Apollo moon landings.
Musk’s Mars Ambitions Make Coincidence Resonate
The coincidence resonates because Musk has spent years building Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) around making humanity multiplanetary. He recently declared, "I will not forget about Mars," and has said people could reach Mars in roughly five to seven years.
SpaceX says Starship is designed to carry crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Its published Mars plan envisions a self-sufficient city requiring more than one million people and millions of tonnes of cargo.
SpaceX Shifts Near-Term Focus Toward Moon
Musk has also argued that full rocket reusability is essential to becoming multiplanetary. However, SpaceX shifted its nearer-term priority toward a "self-growing city" on the Moon.
Reuters reported in February that SpaceX had pushed back its immediate Mars plans while prioritizing a lunar landing. The company now lists cargo flights to Mars no earlier than 2028.
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