> yet agreeing to only get paid when he does go to Mars.

He already owns hundreds of billions of dollars worth of SpaceX. He "gets paid" whether or not these goals are achieved (a million people on mars definitely won't be achieved this century, as the place is fucking awful; one thousand is vanishingly unlikely, one million is flat-out not happening). In fact, hyping the company up ahead of IPO gets him paid, to the tune of thousands of working people's lifetime earnings.