Moon was a distraction and Mars the goal for billionaire SpaceX chief – could Trump have influenced his U-turn? Moon was a distraction and Mars the goal for billionaire SpaceX chief – could Trump have influenced his U-turn? Barely a year ago, the moon was “ a distraction ” to Elon Musk , the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX then fixated on his ludicrously ambitious project to build a self-sustaining city on Mars within 20 years. Why bother returning to the orbiting chunk of rock humanity