One rationale for merging SpaceX with Tesla is that the ever-busy Elon Musk could do just one earnings call per quarter instead of two. Hardly decisive, perhaps, but the conceit of prioritizing his preferences is salient enough. Talk of combining Space Exploration Technologies Corp. with Tesla Inc. overshadowed the quarterly calls of both companies this week. The results, however, illustrated just how odd this merger would be.

Musk confirmed during Tuesday’s SpaceX call that the two companies have formed special committees to examine the issue. He noted that his conflicts as chief executive and major shareholder at both companies preclude him from participating in the discussions, while stating his personal preference in favor of a deal. Not once but three times, his enthusiasm rising as he detailed collaborative opportunities in the “super intelligence singularity.”One can almost picture those independent committee members listening in and trading wry smiles at Musk’s excitable pitch before solemnly blocking all that from their minds and focusing solely on what’s best for all those non-trillionaire shareholders.

As for the results, SpaceX utterly eclipsed Tesla. The rocket company trounced a relatively stable earnings forecast, while Tesla eked out a small beat against a consensus that had been dropping all year. SpaceX’s first quarterly positive net income, at $4.4 billion, was considerably higher than Tesla’s for the past four quarters combined.

Suffice to say, the electric vehicle maker is looking a bit shabby compared to its intergalactic cousin, despite being valued at an absurd 187 times forward earnings. Both companies have converged on the hotter corners of the market, such as artificial intelligence, robots and chips. But the narrative momentum has swung markedly toward SpaceX, not least because it has a much bigger, and clearly reported, AI division and profitable connectivity business.

Tesla, meanwhile, cannot escape the fact that its main business of making and selling cars stopped growing a while ago. For all the hoopla about its recent flying Roadster event, the vehicle is destined to sell in even fewer numbers than the never popular Cybertruck. Musk threw out a new projection of selling 5 million vehicles annually by 2030 on the Tesla call, up from an anticipated 1.8 million this year.

But let’s not forget that Tesla was targeting 20 million vehicles by 2030 not so long ago. Boasts of its robotaxis racking up nearly two million miles of unsupervised driving pale in comparison to rival Waymo LLC, which drives more than double that in a week.

This context carries echoes of a prior merger in the Musk empire, namely Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity Corp. Back then, Tesla absorbed a struggling residential solar company where Musk was chairman. Tesla isn’t spiraling the way SolarCity was, but its challenges mean SpaceX would make for a welcome buyer.

Both Tesla’s and SpaceX’s valuations rest on blue-sky visions of growth. Tesla’s looks even more so given the mismatch between analysts’ huge valuations for things like robotaxis and the company’s lack of progress relative to its grandiose claims. Combining Tesla with SpaceX would likely make for easier funding of their massive infrastructure projects, but the added bonus would be to subsume the car company’s struggles into a bigger, more expansive narrative.

We can expect big touted synergies as and when a deal gets announced. The main streamlining, however, concerns Musk’s personal capitalization table. As I wrote here, cementing control of his empire offers all the rationale Musk needs. His tight control of SpaceX, with about 85% voting power via a special class of shares, makes it the ideal vehicle. If SpaceX used stock to acquire Tesla at a 30% premium, valuing the latter at $502 per share, Musk’s pro forma voting power would only drop to 74%, by my calculations.

Musk noted that getting more than half of Tesla’s shareholders to approve a deal could be a “high hurdle.”An offer price setting a new all-time peak would help on that front. Even at a smaller premium, they might be easily persuadable given Tesla’s current struggles and long-dated option value. Sure, they would own shares in a concentrated bet on an AI sector that looks ever more bubbly, and with little power to direct things, but how different is that really from their current situation?

The bigger objections might come from SpaceX’s regular shareholders. At that price level, Tesla’s shareholders would end up owning almost 50% of the combined company — almost equal to their counterparts at SpaceX despite Tesla contributing far less on pretty much any metric you can think of.

Then again, any such objections would be of very little consequence, given regular SpaceX shareholders’ paltry voting power of about 11%. Plus, they bought into the company knowing precisely that this particular rocket has only one pilot. Musk characterized the special committees’ discussions without him as an “odd kabuki,” this may be one of those instances where it is worth taking him at his word.