Elon's caught in a liminal space between Wine Mom Liberal and Extremely Divorced Chud. He remembers people being excited about Star Trek, but he only grasps the "pew pew space lasers!" part, not the "ethical dilemma of the Kobayashi Maru" part.

If he'd been fully MAGA'd, he would be raving about Bringing Christ's Holy Message Beyond the Stars or doing Heinlein callbacks to Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

Instead, he's still got this latent impulse to convince whatever dregs of the 1960s Space Race liberals left at NASA that he's still cool.