Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO and a notorious internet troll, announced in a tweet that one of SpaceX’s future missions will be paid for with Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency whose name is inspired by the Doge meme. This announcement fits with Musk’s track record of eccentric (and meme-like) moves, such as his launching a red Tesla into space for no good reason and his 2018 market-disrupting tweet that led to a lawsuit by the US Securities and Exchanges Commission. In similar pomp to how Reddit users caused Gamestop's shares to skyrocket in the recent wallstreetbets “GME to the Moon” campaign, Musk’s new tweet now also wants to take Dogecoin to the Moon, both literally and figuratively.

The mission referred to as DOGE-1 is, in fact, real — confirmed by collaborator Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) in a press release. DOGE-1 will be a small satellite carried to the moon by a Falcon 9 rocket in early 2022, collecting yet unspecified images and other data of the lunar surface. Although Dogecoin started as a joke, this collaboration with GEC adds heft to Dogecoin’s tenuous reputation as a usable currency. GEC even claimed that Dogecoin “has been chosen as the unit of account for all lunar business between SpaceX and Geometric Energy Corporation and sets precedent for future missions to the Moon and Mars.”

As a leader in private space exploration, SpaceX is constantly setting precedents for humanity’s future in space, be it intentionally or not. It’s definitely worth considering what a future with meme missions dictated by the whims of a solitary billionaire would really look like, and if it's the kind of future we want.