Musk used the Mars story from the start of all of this.
Videos of dad, mom and the kids holding hands in Elon City.
But it's not built to transport people. You can see that by the design of it.
It's a purpose-built Pez dispenser for Starlink deployment, and that's it.
That was always the intent, but "it's for my Starlink network" is a hard regulatory sell.
A Mars mission, should it ever exist, would be an interplanetary scale money hole for SpaceX.
Starlink is already making money today, plus other benefits.
Musk may be dumb, but he ain't stupid.