Ten years after Elon Musk unveiled his Mars ship, Starship finally reached orbit — and still watched the 2026 Mars window close. The lesson is not about rockets. It is about building a business on a calendar you do not control. On September 28, 2016, Musk unveiled the Interplanetary Transport System, a giant spaceship meant to carry people to Mars. On September 28, 2026 — ten years and a day later — its stainless-steel descendant, Starship, reached orbit for the first time on

No customer has ever bought a ticket to Mars. So who is writing the checks that are building the road there? Follow the capital stack. Every Mars headline is secretly a finance story. A rocket rises, and underneath it sit four different kinds of money, stacked in layers, each with its own motive. Understand the stack and you understand why Mars is moving now — after decades of paper studies — and who gets paid along the way. This is the pillar piece for The Money: the map we