John Carmack visits Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starbase, selfies ensue

John Carmack is as notable as videogame developers get: He co-founded id Software and led the programming of groundbreaking 3D games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. He’s also a literal rocket scientist. Carmack founded Armadillo Aerospace in 2000 to compete for the Ansari X Prize, which offered $10 million to the first non-government organization that could launch a reusable crewed spacecraft twice within a two-week stretch. It didn’t win—a company funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen claimed the prize in 2004—and in 2013, Carmack effectively called it quits.

Elon Musk is pretty well known in videogame circles too. He’s a big Deus Ex fan, there was speculation that his dumb truck would appear in Cyberpunk 2077 (it didn’t), and he helped drive up GameStop’s share price earlier this year when he tweeted about it in the midst of the WallStreetBets blowup. He also took part in an awkward interview with Todd Howard in 2019, in which Howard said he paid a visit SpaceX headquarters to help bring “authenticity” to Bethesda’s upcoming Starfield.