Joe Rogan Experience Ep: 2404
Elon Musk (October 31, 2025)
https://youtu.be/O4wBUysNe2k
3:18:25

4,222,370 views…and rising.

Would SpaceX land their own manned lunar mission before their customer’s, NASA’s, Artemis III? Would SpaceX want to upstage NASA’s great return to the Moon?

Maybe so, since Duffy called them too slow, SpaceX may want to show that Starship is ahead of even their customer’s lunar program. Especially if Duffy absorbs NASA into his Department of Transportation (DoT) and continues being the Big Cheese over whoever ends up leading the NASA section of the DoT.

So, if Duffy had called them out in order to get them to hurry up, does this mean that he succeeded in needling them enough to work harder to prove him wrong?

On the other hand, if someone else becomes NASA administrator (e.g. Isaacman), then maybe SpaceX won’t be as eager to prove Duffy wrong.

SpaceX going it alone, either before or after Artemis III, should be America’s space program’s objective. Free market capitalism in space is how we get what we want from space. Government has provided us far less than we expected and hardly what we had wanted. The commercial space companies have done much better at producing what we had wanted and expected from space than the government has done for us. We really have to wonder whether government does what We the People want done or whether government taxes us for its own goals, not for the people’s goals.

Government’s system for returning to the Moon is a complicated Rube Goldberg, but SpaceX has a straightforward method that can move huge amounts of men and materials.

Robert said, “The only one that has any chance of really establishing a lunar base, right now, is SpaceX, with its own privately funded space program that’s raising billions of dollars through Starlink. So that is what the takeaway is.”

As Robert and John later noted, SpaceX, with its limited resources, is beating three governments. “So, what we have here is that Musk can beat three nations, the U.S., China, and Russia,” said John.

“That’s what he’s telling NASA, right now, very subtly,” replied Robert.

Why does free market capitalism work better than government run projects? Because the customers provide a much better incentive than taxpayers provide. It isn’t as though taxpayers can withhold their taxes unless they get what they want, because taxes are not as voluntary as government likes to say they are. But every commercial company, and especially within free market commerce, relies so heavily upon its customers that it must satisfy their demands. Otherwise the customers will spend their money elsewhere. Governments are funded whether or not they satisfy their taxpayers, but free market companies are funded only when they satisfy their customers.

Duffy has demonstrated this basic principle of free markets. He is not feeling satisfied, so he is opening bidding for the Human Landing System, whatever he means by that.*

So, new question: What happens to NASA if SpaceX beats it with their own astronauts on the surface of the Moon? Especially if SpaceX puts the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon? More especially if Duffy absorbs NASA into the DoT? Even more especially if Orion kills the Artemis II crew?
__________
* Do Blue Origin and SpaceX have to submit new proposals for new contracts, or is he merely going to let other companies make bids to compete with these two companies, and if so, where is he going to get the additional funds to pay for the new company or two? It isn’t as though he can transfer stray funds from his DoT, unless NASA gets absorbed into the DoT.