Elon Musk’s SpaceX is looking to raise more than $25 billion through an initial public offering in 2026, a move that could boost the rocket-maker’s valuation to over $1 trillion, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. The company’s move towards a public listing, which could rank among the largest global IPOs, has been largely driven by the rapid expansion of its Starlink satellite internet business, including plans for direct-to-mobile service and progress in its Starship rocket program for moon and Mars missions.

SpaceX has started discussions with banks about launching the offering around June or July, the person said, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential information.

Since both stories rely entirely on anonymous sources, we should not take either very seriously. I only post this now merely to put it on the record. And though Elon Musk has since hinted there might be some truth to both, he has also been very vague about his plans. While a public offering would garner him a lot of cash, it would bring with it a lot of regulatory headaches that would seriously interfere with what he wants to do. In the end I think (and hope) he will decide it ain’t worth it. Starlink right now is bringing in enough money to allow him to accomplish everything, and more.

If anything, these stories illustrate again the corruption in our modern propaganda press. Such stories would have been considered junk four decades ago. Then it was traditional practice that a story needed at least two independent sources, one of which was not anonymous. No longer. Anyone can push any lie, and these news outlets will publicize it, for the sake of clicks.

NOTE: This is a recreation of a post published on December 10, 2025 that was lost during this morning’s server outage.

I ask the question in my headline because I am quite sure it is a question most Americans can no longer answer, with any firm knowledge. I myself didn’t know who Vanderbilt really was until I read a wonderful biography of him, The First Tycoon: The epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles, about two months ago.

Beforehand, all I really knew about Vanderbilt was that he had been a big deal somehow in the 1800s, and as a result there was a statue of him on the south side of Grand Central Station in New York, visible only by drivers going past on the overpass that circles the station.

What I learned from Stiles book however was astonishing. Not only did Vanderbilt build Grand Central Station, it was part of a transportation empire he created that by the end of his life covered most of the eastern United States. For Americans in the 1800s, if you needed to get from one place to another, you almost certainly rode on a Vanderbilt steamship or railroad.

Even more interesting to me however were the remarkable similarities in style, approach, and success between the Cornelius Vanderbilt of the 1800s and the Elon Musk of the 2000s. Both focused on taking new technology and making it profitable. Both built their empires on transportation.

And most of all, both focused on the product they were building to make money, not on speculating its value to make a quick buck.

Vanderbilt’s statue in front of Grand
Central Station. Click for source.

In Vanderbilt’s case, he began as a teenager growing up in Staten Island working on his father’s sailing boats. Much of their income came from transporting commuters to and from Manhattan. Vanderbilt soon expanded the business with his own boats. When steamships arrived he quickly transitioned to that new technology, establishing commuter lines all along the waterways from New York to Philadelphia to Boston to Albany. The Staten Island Ferry for example was created by Vanderbilt, not the New York City government.

As this business grew he linked it with ground transportation, first wagons, then railroads. Railroads required gigantic amounts of capital, and thus forced the establishment of the first large corporations, using stock sales to raise that capital. Not surprisingly, many railroad executives saw the manipulation of the railroad stock as their prime method of getting rich. They didn’t care if they ran their railroad into the ground, and in fact, often did exactly that, if it allowed them to cash in.

Vanderbilt was different. When he financed a new railroad, or purchased its stock, it wasn’t to speculate on the stock. It was to make that railroad a profitable operation, serving its customers with reasonable fares while getting them where they wanted to go as quickly as possible. Often he gained control of one of those badly run lines and quickly reorganized it, making it profitable once again.

And in this task Vanderbilt was remarkably successful. By the time he died in 1877 he was the richest man in America, his wealth so large it was difficult at that time to measure it. His railroads provided the main transportation from Chicago across the entire northeast of the United States.

Vanderbilt’s story was even more fascinating to me because of its uncanny parallels with that of Elon Musk. Like Vanderbilt, Musk started small, but at every step used new technology to create products needed by the general public. First it was Paypal, then it was SpaceX and rocketry. Next it was electric cars, followed by large scale municipal tunnel digging and robots.

In every case however Musk has had no interest in speculation. His goal was to make a good product, one that people wanted to buy because it provided what they needed at less cost than his competitors while doing it better.

And like Vanderbilt, Musk built his empire based on the American concept of freedom and capitalism. The goal was to make money, creating new products. The route to do so was through each man’s personal creativity, following his own personal dreams.

In the 1800s Vanderbilt was largely free to do whatever he wanted. The government had little regulatory control of his actions. His general honesty, combined with a ruthless competitive spirit, resulted in great success.

Musk entering Twitter headquarters for the first time,
carrying a kitchen sink. His message: I’m cleaning house!

In the 2000s Musk has not had as free a hand as Vanderbilt. Our modern administrative state controls too much of American business. Musk has either had to feed off its trough, or fight it tooth and nail to get it out of his way. For Tesla he relied on government subsidies. With SpaceX he had to sue the Air Force to allow it to bid on military launch contracts. With Starship he had to become political to kick the Democrats controlling the White House out of power, because their red tape during the Biden years was suffocating him.

And when Twitter was squelching the free speech of conservatives, Musk simply bought it and reshaped it to do its job right, making X now one of the best bastion’s of free speech in the technological world.

But like Vanderbilt, Musk has no interest in political power. Vanderbilt always avoided politics, at all costs. The only time he involved himself in Washington was during the Civil War, when he donated his largest ship to the Union effort. As Stiles noted,

An honest reading of the evidence shows a proud, prickly, and highly capable man of immense personal force–one who was also deeply patriotic. … When given the chance, he served his country to the utmost while refusing any remuneration.

One could easily apply this description quite accurately to Elon Musk. He didn’t campaign for Trump because he hoped it would win him government contracts. He did it because he saw Trump as the best option for America. That it might help his own businesses was of course likely, but that possibility was clearly not Musk’s prime motive during last year’s election campaign.

And once that campaign was over? Like Vanderbilt, Musk abandoned politics to go back to his private businesses.

Vanderbilt’s history, as well as Musk’s, illustrates the greatest aspect of America. It truly is a place that supports “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You certainly can do bad things with that freedom, but if you make morality and doing good works as your fundamental goals, that freedom will allow you to do great things.

Vanderbilt, and Musk, prove this. We would be wise if we all emulated them.

Mexican anti-Musk activists have now announced new complaints against SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch operations, claiming the soft-splash down of its Superheavy boosters in the Gulf of Mexico is damaging marine life, and the company’s effort to remove its stage and debris is further damaging the ocean floor.

Conibio Global A.C., a marine biodiversity organization in Mexico, launched “Expedition Booster 2025” this summer in partnership with the state of Tamaulipas and the Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas. The group is studying how booster landings near Playa Bagdad may be affecting wildlife and nearby communities. “We have 20 kilometers of space debris, which amounts to tons,” said Jesus Elias Ibarra Rodriguez, president of Conibio Global A.C. “If you go right now, you’ll find three or five pieces of plastic or metal or electrical parts from the thruster, even tanks—there is already a lot of debris.”

Researchers report that sea turtles and dolphins often mistake smaller debris for food, which can lead to deadly ingestion. They also documented debris fragments measuring between two and 10 meters long. According to the group, 3-D sonar imaging shows that a platform used in July to remove debris may have caused additional damage to the seafloor. “This platform has three structures that were sunk and anchored to the seafloor,” Rodriguez said. “During the investigation, we realized that it caused damage and holes when its structures were wedged in while removing the engines, and the engines were damaging the seabed and the species that live in the area.”

In other words, SpaceX is evil for dropping Superheavy in the Gulf, and it is also evil for removing it. Or to put this in real terms, these activists simply don’t want SpaceX to do anything. Their goal is to shut the company down entirely.

Moreover, their research is clearly bogus and overwrought. The entire world has been dropping lower stages in the oceans for more than three-quarters of a century, with no documented harm to marine life or the oceans. These faux scientists are simply puffing up their work to use this as a hammer against SpaceX.

Their complaint meanwhile appears somewhat bogus as well. They are “in communication” with Mexican authorities, and only “plan to present [their] findings” to that government eventually. In other words, their complaint hasn’t been filed with the government, but with our compliant propaganda press (in this case a local Texas news outlet), who are always glad to push the leftist agenda, no matter how idiotic.

Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

As expected, Elon Musk responded yesterday with anger and insults to the announcement by interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy that he will consider other manned lunar landers besides Starship for the first Artemis landing on the Moon.

And as expected, our brainless and generally uneducated propaganda press grabbed the shiny object that Duffy had put out with this announcement to focus entirely on the public spat. Here is just a sampling of the typical reports:

• Axios: Musk rages at Trump’s Transportation head on X: He “is trying to kill NASA!”
• CNBC: Musk blasts Duffy after Artemis contract spat: He ‘is trying to kill NASA!’
• The Hill: Elon Musk: Sean ‘Dummy’ shouldn’t run NASA
• Politico: ‘Sean Dummy’: Musk and Duffy brawl over the future of NASA
• Washington Examiner: Musk says Trump transportation chief ‘Sean Dummy’ trying to ‘kill’ NASA
• Bloomberg: Musk Lobs Insults as NASA Hopeful Isaacman Praises Leader Duffy
• Ars Technica: Elon Musk just declared war on NASA’s acting administrator, apparently
• NBC: Elon Musk goes on a tirade after NASA says it will seek moon landers from SpaceX rivals

Not one of these articles reported the fact that Duffy’s announcement also included an admission that NASA is now delaying this manned Moon mission until 2028. Not one went into any depth as to why this program is delayed, if they discussed it at all. And any articles that did discuss the program’s overall slow pace, the focus was always entirely on SpaceX, as if its Starship program was the sole cause of all the problems. Essentially, they picked up Duffy’s talking points and ran with them, blindly. In fact, for almost all of these articles, it appeared as if the reporter was writing about NASA’s Artemis program for the first time, and really knew nothing about it.

Only the Ars Technica story attempted some thoughtful analysis, but it focused on the office politics of choosing NASA’s next administrator, missing entirely the fundamentals of this story, that the Artemis program is and has always been a mess, and that Duffy’s decision will do nothing to fix the problem.

Musk of course foolishly played into Duffy’s hands by reacting so violently, with insults, helping Duffy distract from the real issues. At the same time, Musk also spoke truth with this one tweet:

SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.

Duffy has done nothing to fix the fundamental problems with the Artemis program. It still relies on SLS, a flawed rocket that is too expensive, too cumbersome, and lacks sufficient power for the job. It is still relies on the Orion capsule to ferry astronauts to lunar orbit, even though its heat shield is fundamentally flawed and no in-space test of its environmental system (which keeps the astronauts alive) has yet occurred. It is still focused on depending on the Lunar Gateway space station for its long term lunar exploration, even though that station will not be manned regularly, is behind schedule, and is in an orbit that makes it more expensive in fuel to get to the lunar surface.

The program has no coherence. Its management has been a mess from the start, with every component (except SpaceX’s) going significantly over budget and behind schedule.

Damage to Orion’s heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”.
Nor has this issue been fixed.

And worst of all, it has made the schedule as its primary focus for when things will happen, not good engineering. Both Trump and Duffy want that manned lunar landing to occur before Trump leaves office, and to do it they will put four astronauts in Orion to circle the Moon next spring, even though its heat shield is not trustworthy and its environmental systems are untested. The schedule demands it! Doing another unmanned mission with a fixed heat shield would require another year of development, and make a lunar landing by 2028 impossible.

Musk is hinting at these issues with his tweet above. If that mission kills the astronauts, a distinct possibility, then this whole house of cards will collapse, and the feds are going to have to find another alternative. And SpaceX is the only one around providing it.

As expected, the California Coastal Commission yesterday again rejected the proposed doubling of launches by SpaceX at the Vandenberg Space Force Base, from 50 to 100 launches per year, claiming this time it would destroy the environment.

“The sonic booms and their impacts on California’s people, wildlife and property are extremely concerning,” Commissioner Linda Escalante said at a hearing Thursday in Calabasas. “The negative impacts on public access, natural resources and environmental health warrant our scrutiny under California as a standard of review.”

The commissioners and its staff also argued that the launches were not related to national security or military purposes, but instead acted “to expand SpaceX’s commercial telecommunications network rather than serve federal agencies.” See the staff report [pdf] issued prior to the meeting.

The simple fact remains that it is a privately owned company engaged in activities primarily for its own commercial business. It is not a public federal agency or conducting its launches on
behalf of the federal government. It should therefore be regulated accordingly. [emphasis mine]

How dare SpaceX try to make a profit as a private company in America? And how dare the Space Force act as a servant of the people to provide this private company service? What have we come to?! Is communism and top-down authoritarian rule no longer America’s fundamental purpose?

Nor are the claims of the commission about the environment valid. They are simply Chicken Little screaming “The sky is falling!” We now have more than seven decades of empirical evidence — at Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral, and Kennedy — that spaceports do zero harm to the environment. If anything, they promote wildlife protection, as they create large refuges where development cannot occur.

This second meeting by the Coastal Commission was called not simply to reject SpaceX’s proposal. It was called to provide legal cover for the commission. When it rejected this launch proposal last year, it did not cite these more cogent but still bogus reasons. Instead, the commissioners opposed the proposal because they hated Elon Musk for supporting Donald Trump. That action violated Musk’s free speech rights, but more importantly it also violated SpaceX’s rights as a business. SpaceX has sued the commission, and the courts have since ruled the lawsuit can go forward.

SpaceX has a very strong case, and yesterday’s commission meeting was designed to give it arguments it can use in court against SpaceX. In a sane world where America’s foundational beliefs in freedom and private enterprise where the government is merely the servant of the people, these new arguments would carry no weight, and SpaceX would win easily. We no longer live in that world.

In the end this is all kabuki theater. The Space Force has already made it clear that it is agreeable to the increased launch rate, and the coastal commission has no authority to stop it.

Blumenfeld granted a motion to dismiss violations of the First Amendment and due process against the commission and individual members based on lack of standing, sovereign immunity and failure to state a claim, but allowed allegations of “biased attempts to regulate SpaceX’s activity” and unlawfully demanding a CDP to proceed.

“In sum, SpaceX has plausibly alleged a ripe, nonspeculative case or controversy over whether it must obtain a CDP to continue its Falcon 9 launches,” Blumenfeld said in his order. “The credible threat that defendants will bring an enforcement action and subject SpaceX to daily fines for not having a CDP — which defendants pointedly do not disavow — is sufficient to establish an actual injury under Article III [of the U.S. Constitution].”

It appears the judge acted to protect the commissioners themselves from direct liability, using the made-up concept from the 20th century that government employees are somehow wholly immune from any responsibility for their actions.

Nonetheless, SpaceX has a great case, and is very likely to win in court, a victory that could very well cause the coastal commission and the state of California serious monetary pain.

Mexico’s government was studying which international laws were being violated in order to file “the necessary lawsuits” because “there is indeed contamination”, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference on Wednesday.

…Mexican officials are carrying out a “comprehensive review” of the environmental impacts of the rocket launches for the neighboring state of Tamaulipas, Sheinbaum said.

Other than this one quote, the article at the link is largely junk, focusing on the test stand explosion last week of Starship, an event that has nothing to do with the material found on Mexico’s beaches. Moreover, that debris was apparently so harmless Mexicans were able to quickly gather it for souvenirs, with some immediately making money from it by selling it on social media.

In other words, this “investigation” and this “reporting” is nothing more than anti-Musk rhetoric because Musk has aligned himself with Trump.

It appears Elon Musk finally gave his public presentation to SpaceX employees today, entitled “The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary”, and had it posted on X.

I have embedded that presentation below.

After reviewing the present development program for Starship/Superheavy (without mentioning anything about this week’s flight), Musk then outlined the game plan for the the next few years, as shown in the graphic above. If all goes as planned (not to be expected), the first Starships will head to Mars in about eighteen months, at the next launch window near the end of 2026. These flights will be unmanned, and will require that by then SpaceX will have also developed orbital refueling capability.

Musk hopes the first manned missions will take place at the next launch window in 2028-29, with the number of ships increased from 5 to 20. Later windows will see 300 and then 500 ships launched. For those flights a lot of work will need to be done to make Starships function as interplanetary spaceships, something it appears SpaceX and Musk have not yet devoted much energy to.

As always, Musk’s target goals are ambitious and not likely to be met. But as always, his targets are not unreasonable, which means SpaceX will likely eventually get all this done but late by only one or several launch windows.

Musk also noted that this entire program is presently being funded by Starlink revenues. The government for SpaceX and Musk’s space exploration plans is largely now irrelevant. This fact is possibly the most historically significant revelation in his presentation.

I strongly recommend you watch his whole speech, if only to enjoy the “Wow!” factor.

The future is going to be exciting for sure.

Hat tip to reader Gary.

The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary: an update from @elonmusk on SpaceX's plan to reach Mars pic.twitter.com/d2cnsVKK80

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 29, 2025

UPDATE: It appears Musk has rescheduled his speech for 6 pm (Central) tonight, after the launch of the ninth test flight of Starship/Superheavy. The embedded live stream below is for this rescheduled broadcast.

I have embedded below the Space Affairs live stream of Elon Musk’s speech that he plans to give to his SpaceX employees today at 10 am (Pacific) today. Musk has entitled it “The road to making life interplanetary.” He has already indicated that he will outline in more detail SpaceX’s program for getting Starship/Superheavy operational, including the likelihood of test flights to Mars in the near future.

In an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk did not confirm whether a deal had been made with South Africa, as suggested in the reports. However, he maintains that Starlink’s failure to secure a license is attributed to his not being black.

“First of all, you should be questioning why there are racist laws in South Africa; that’s the problem. That’s the issue you should be attacking. The whole idea with Nelson Mandela, he was a great man, was that all races should be on equal footing in South Africa, that’s the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws.”

“I was born in South Africa but can’t get a licence to operate in Starlink because I’m not black,” Musk said.

The first link notes that South Africa requires a 30% ownership by “historically disadvantaged groups, primarily Black South Africans,” a racist quota that Musk is likely to reject whole-heartedly.

A 9-foot-tall statue depicting a bust of tech billionaire Elon Musk has been vandalized in South Texas. According to multiple posts across social media, the statue of the SpaceX CEO was vandalized not far from where the company’s Starbase facility sits near Boca Chica Beach.

“The recently installed Elon Musk statue, known as ‘Elonrwa,’ has been damaged. Visible patches of the outer layer appear to have been peeled off the face,” a Facebook user who goes by RGV.me said in an April 8 Facebook post. The Facebook post is accompanied by a photograph showing two areas where it appears a top layer of material has been stripped from the statue, revealing a white or pale gray layer underneath.

This senseless hate of Musk, almost certainly committed by supporters of the Democratic Party — which has been encouraging this violence because it sees Musk as an opponent — must end. And if the fools perpetrating this vandalism don’t come to their senses and stop voluntarily, they should be stopped by force and imprisonment. Just because you disagree with someone on policy does not give you the right to break the law.

And if you doubt this vandalism isn’t being spurred on eagerly by the leadership of the now vile and wholly evil Democratic Party, you need only watch that party’s Senate leader, Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York), practically endorse it when asked:

🚨Chuck Schumer is asked to denounce violence against Tesla — he REFUSES, then angrily attacks Elon Musk instead:

"I can't talk about Tesla, but Elon Musk is a disaster for America.” pic.twitter.com/TdeKPrAPBC

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 9, 2025

Food fight! Yesterday Elon Musk did a Donald Trump, issuing a bunch of tweets that are likely causing some heads to explode inside NASA, Congress, and Europe.

First — and far less significant — Musk got into a war of insults with European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen over his comments in recent days accusing the Biden administration of delaying the return of the two Starliner astronauts “for political reasons.” Mogensen accused Musk lying about this, and Musk responded by calling Mogenson “fully retarded” and an “idiot,” adding that “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons.”

Since Musk was there and Mogensen was not, it seems Musk won that battle. NASA meanwhile issued a mild statement saying everything it has done has been to maximize safety, a statement that matches the facts quite accurately.

Then Musk — on a far more important topic — stirred the pot more by tweeting his belief that ISS should be retired now.

It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the Space_Station. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars.

In a second tweet he recommended the de-orbit should occur “two years from now.”

Left unstated by Musk was what might be his most important reason for retiring ISS so quickly: the fragile condition of the Russian-built Zvezda module. It has stress fracture cracks that are the cause of the airleak in the station, as noted in detail in the graphic above. More important, there are real concerns those cracks could cause the module to break apart during any docking operation. As it is a central module in the station, connecting the Russian section with the American, such an event would be catastrophic for the station and the lives of the astronauts on board.

Though it appears to me the reaction to Musk’s ISS proposal has mostly been mild so far, expect significant opposition if Trump attempts to carry it out — despite the real dangers posed by Zvezda’s cracks. First of all, an early retirement would do great damage to the plans of the commercial space station Axiom, which plans to initially attach its station modules to ISS. Though the company has accelerated that schedule, an ISS de-orbit in 2027 would give it almost no margin.

Second, early retirement would break NASA’s many agreements with its international ISS partners. They would have to agree to this plan, and it is very uncertain if they would.

Third, SpaceX first has to complete construction of the de-orbit spacecraft that would dock with ISS and use its thrusters to plunge the station into the Pacific. NASA gave the company a $843 million contract in 2024, but revealed no target date, other than stating it should happen “after the end of its operational life in 2030.” Musk’s tweet suggests he knows that SpaceX will have that spacecraft ready far sooner, but once again, no one has released any concrete time schedule.

Fourth, it is very unlikely any of the private space stations presently under development would be ready for launch in two years. An early de-orbit would thus cause a break in manned space activity by the United States and its partners, and leave such operations solely in the hands of China. I suspect this will be unacceptable to politicians in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Even Russia might balk.

Fifth, an early de-orbit of ISS would actually impact SpaceX negatively, as its contracts with NASA to ferry crew and cargo there would end prematurely. Does Musk really think those other private stations will be able to replace this revenue stream that quickly?

The Zvezda module, with aft section indicated
where the cracks have been found.

All these objections however could become moot, if the cracks in the Zvezda module worsen. At that time the decision would no longer be political or economical, but solely based on the reality of engineering, a reality that at this moment is probably the most important reason to take Musk’s recommendations seriously.

In fact, it is somewhat shameful that Congress, NASA, Russia, and its international partners have all taken Zvezda’s fragile condition so lightly. Reminds me of NASA’s attitude in connection with the Challenger and Columbia shuttle failures. Then politics ruled instead of engineering, and because of that people died.

It seems to me Musk has recognized the engineering reality of ISS, and is trying to shift the politics in the right direction. All of the political, financial, and technical issues I list above against early de-orbit vanish in importance when one realizes that letting things drift as they are might very well be the worst decision of all.

The billionaire SpaceX CEO said his company was “accelerating the return of the astronauts” as per Trump’s instructions. Musk then appeared to take a shot at the Biden administration, saying the move was “postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree,” before the president chimed in saying “they got left in space.”

When Hannity pointed out the astronauts have been on the ISS for almost 300 days instead of the planned 8 days, Trump simply said “Biden,” before Musk claimed they were “left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”

While the decision to return Starliner unmanned certainly had a political component (a desire to avoid a disaster in the final year of Biden’s term), Musk’s claim is greatly exaggerated. Worse, Musk is papering over his own company’s contribution to the delays. Had SpaceX and NASA chosen in December to use an already existing Dragon capsule instead of a brand new capsule to launch the next crew to ISS, the astronauts would be home already. Instead, they decided to get that new capsule ready, requiring an almost two month delay in their return.

When it became obvious last month that even this extra time was insufficient to get the new capsule ready, only then did SpaceX and NASA choose to switch capsules. That switch allowed them to move up the return date by about a week.

In reporting Musk’s words here, our ignorant press has generally left these details out, allowing both Musk and Trump to make it appear as they are saviors for these poor astronauts. This is simply not true. SpaceX is certainly making it possible to bring them home (something Boeing was unable to do), but it also contributed to the delay in doing so.

Tomorrow, members of @elonmusk’s SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.

Because I know the media (and Hillary Clinton) will claim Elon’s team is getting special access, let me make clear that the @FAANews regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies.

Many propaganda news reports immediately did exactly what Duffy predicted, quickly finding people to attack both Musk and Duffy for this action and giving them a bull horn for those attacks:

That prompted criticism from some aviation professionals. “SpaceX put people in danger yesterday and their for-profit corporation should reimburse every other for-profit corporation that had to divert, change course or delay because of their operations in the national airspace system,” wrote Steve Jangelis, aviation safety chair for the Air Line Pilots Association, in a social media post after the incident.

Like many in the propaganda press, this article made a big deal about the debris that fell in the Caribbean during the January Starship/Superheavy test flight when Starship broke up soon after stage separation. It however buried this fact to the very end of the article:

In the case if January’s launch, Diez said SpaceX coordinated “debris response areas” with ATO [the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization] beforehand, as it had done on past flights, but this was the first time the areas were activated. “It was only a matter of minutes from when it was activated to when airspace began to be cleared,” she said, sufficient given the time it would take for debris to fall into the airspace. The airspace was cleared in about 15 minutes, she added.

Those debris response areas are developed in coordination with the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, said Katie Cranor, acting deputy director of AST’s office of operational safety, on the same panel. After the mishap, she said “only certain sections of the debris response areas were activated to allow traffic to still move freely.”

To put it more bluntly, SpaceX did the proper due diligence before launch — anticipating the possibility of such a failure — and worked well with the FAA to prepare for it. These facts have been conveniently left out of all the reports on that January launch, and we should at least give kudos to this article for finally mentioning it, albeit reluctantly.

Nonetheless, the insane hostile reaction to this invitation for help by the Transportation Department illustrates once again the stupidity of the left. In every case they attack blindly and without any thought at all, hoping such attacks will win them support and hurt their opponents. Instead, it simply makes them look petty and stupid, and is likely convincing their moderate supporters to rethink that support.

Proving she knows nothing about the Constitution and the powers it gives to the President, congresswoman Grace Meng (D-New York) earlier this week sent a letter to NASA’s acting administrator Janet Petro demanding that Petro revoke any access to the agency’s headquarters by Elon Musk as part of his work auditing government operations as part of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Meng’s letter [pdf] is quite entertaining, especially because it repeats the new Democratic Party talking point that somehow because DOGE employees, including Musk, were “unelected” their access is inappropriate. How stupid. Except for the president, everyone who works in the executive branch of government is “unelected.”

That Meng also thinks NASA’s acting administrator has the power to block access to someone hired specifically by the president to do this work shows us how ignorant she is of the Constitution and basic law. Petro can’t cancel Trump’s orders, even if she wants to. Trump is her boss, and if he tasks Musk and DOGE to audit NASA’s books, she must comply.

There is only one part of Meng’s demand that makes some sense, where she demands Petro “set clear and public ground rules” to keep Musk from getting access to proprietary information of other space companies. Musk certainly has a conflict-of-interest issue at NASA, and such rules make sense. I am also quite sure that Musk is well aware of this issue, and will purposely leave the DOGE audit to others.

Since a Dragon capsule for bringing these astronaut back to Earth is already docked to ISS and is scheduled to return in April, there is nothing really new about Musk’s tweet. Moreover, that April return was delayed an extra two months because of SpaceX, not Boeing or Biden. The company had requested that extra time to prepare the next crew capsule for launch, because it is a new capsule never used before.

It is of course possible that Trump requested SpaceX and NASA to reconsider this extra two month delay, and move the crew return back to February, but that change would either require SpaceX to find a different older capsule for the next crew, fly the new capsule sooner than planned, or have the total number of NASA astronauts on ISS reduced to just one until the new capsule launches with the new crew in March. None of these options seems wise.

I suspect nothing will change, and Musk was merely trolling the press. And the press mostly fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

• Florida Today: Elon Musk says Trump told SpaceX to bring Starliner astronauts home as soon as possible
• Orlando Sentinal: Elon Musk says Trump calls on SpaceX to bring Starliner astronauts home ASAP
• Reuters: Trump, Musk suggest sped-up return of NASA astronauts, but details scarce
• CBS: Trump asks SpaceX to bring “abandoned” Starliner crew home, blames Biden administration for inaction
• New York Times: Elon Musk Suggests SpaceX Will Accelerate Return of NASA Astronauts
• Fox News: Trump, Musk join forces to bring stranded NASA astronauts back via SpaceX after Biden admin ‘abandoned’ them
• NY Post: Trump tasks Elon Musk, SpaceX to bring stranded NASA astronauts back after ‘Biden administration left them there so long”
• The Hill: Trump asks Musk to ‘go get’ NASA astronauts stuck in space

Most of these stories fail to outline the reasons for the most recent delays, having nothing to do with Biden. The last four especially make it sound as if SpaceX has suddenly been enlisted for a rescue mission, a claim that is utterly false.

None have been able to get any confirmation of any change of schedule from NASA or SpaceX, suggesting that Musk’s tweet was entirely blarney that a smart press would have ignored without that confirmation. Our stupid mainstream press however could not do that. It went whole hog based on nothing.

Until NASA announces a change in schedule there simply is no story here, and that’s what I am reporting.

Very quickly the somewhat leftist Anti-Defamation League defended Musk, noting it was absurd and inflammatory to make such an absurd accusation when it was most clearly false and slanderous.

This of course hasn’t stopped Democratic Party politicians from spreading this lie. And in Germany the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany immediately and very childishly removed a picture of Musk that had been part of a permanent exhibit on space travel.

“It can always be problematic to honor living people in such a prominent position in an exhibition, because such a display can be seen as an uncritical tribute. However, a person’s lifetime achievements can often only be properly assessed in retrospect,” said a spokesperson for the Deutsches Museum.

What idiots. Musk’s own response on X to this fake controversy ginned up by these slanderers said it best:

Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The “everyone is Hitler” attack is sooo tired

I personally think these leftist fools should keep doing this stupidity. No one buys it anymore, and every time they do it they put another nail in their own coffin, proving once again that they are unreliable, dishonest propaganda outlets that should not be watched for any reason.

When the current (but soon to step down) administrator of the FAA Mike Whitaker testified before Congress in September 2024 and attempted to explain his agency’s red tape that have significantly slowed development of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, he claimed that the sonic booms produced when Superheavy returned to land at the launchpad posed a “safety issue” that needed a detailed review.

“I think the sonic boom analysis [related to returning Superheavy back to Boca Chica] is a safety related incident.”

The sudden introduction of this issue was somewhat out of the blue. While loud, the sonic boom of a rocket launch is hardly a concern. The space shuttle produced the same for decades when it landed, and that was always considered a fun plus to watching the landing. And even if SpaceX begins launching its rockets once a day from any spaceport, that added noise does nothing to hurt anyone. In fact, it is a local signal of a thriving economy.

Since then it appears the leftist “intellectual elitists” that don’t like it when they don’t run everything — which is one reason they now hate Elon Musk — have run a full court press trying to make these rocket sonic booms a cause celebre that can be used to block SpaceX launches.

Whitaker’s comments about the sonic boom were first picked up by members of the California Coastal Commission on October 10, 2024, when they rejected the Space Force plan to allow more launches at Vandenberg, mostly because they hated Elon Musk’s politics. During that hearing the issue of sonic booms was raised as an additional reason to block more Falcon 9 launches, even though the commission’s own staff had said there was no evidence the booms caused any harm, and that the Space Force had taken the proper actions to mitigate any possible problems.

Then in November a research paper was suddenly published specifically targeting the sonic booms caused by Superheavy, noting ominously that its sonic booms were “substantially louder” than the booms caused by the Falcon 9 or even NASA’s big SLS rocket.

The paper tried to make this sound terrible, but the only negative consequence it could document for these Superheavy sonic booms at landing was that it set off car alarms. Nonetheless, this report was immediately picked up by the leftist New York Times, which claimed the booms could cause “property damage in the densely populated residential community near its South Texas launch site.”

Only a few days later a local Texas newspaper did an article interviewing locals in an attempt to gauge the communities thoughts on Trump and on SpaceX and its operation at Boca Chica. One local was slightly concerned about the sonic booms, but thought the benefits outweighed the costs. The paper however felt obliged however to include these remarks, even though this issue remains an incredibly minor one.

A small sampling of the leftist propaganda
press’s many recent lies

Today we can finally see the result of this anti-SpaceX anti-sonic boom campaign. In describing a planned early morning launch tomorrow of a Falcon 9 at Vandenberg, two different supposedly independent local television news websites (here and here) made the sonic boom that the first stage will make when it returns to Vandenberg for landing the centerpiece of their stories. Be warned! The SpaceX sonic booms are coming!

It didn’t matter SpaceX was bringing work to the region. Nor did it matter that the launches have generated income from tourism. It also didn’t matter that the sonic booms do no harm and until this elitist campaign had been so inconsequential nobody in the Vandenberg area had even complained.

Nope, the propaganda press has gotten its instructions from the administrative state, academia, and the New York Times. From now on, sonic booms — and the noise they will produce — are the central issue whenever SpaceX launches, and must highlighted above everything else with each launch.

This essay is simply my effort to alert my readers to this propaganda campaign. Don’t be fooled when in the future you hear about the evils of SpaceX’s sonic booms. This is simply another media lie that is being pushed for political reasons.

When Elon Musk revealed in May 2022 that he had decided to switch his political allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party, he immediately predicted quite correctly the following: “Watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold.”

As I noted in detail a year ago, the federal campaign against Musk and his companies since then has been extensive and disgusting, with investigations opened by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Transportation Department.

Nor has this harassment eased in the past year. If anything it has accelerated, with the red tape by the FAA slowing down operations at SpaceX to the point of absurdity.

Now, as the campaign season moves to its climax on election day and the polls increasingly show a major shift in the direction of a Trump win, barring any illegal vote tampering, we should not be surprised that the Democrats are now demanding that Elon Musk shut up, and are doing so by issuing new false accusations against him.

Leading the way was a Wall Street Journal report [behind a pay wall], picked up by all the usual suspects in the propaganda press, based solely on anonymous sources, that accused Musk of having private and secret phone conversations with Vladimir Putin, head of Russia. From this typical propaganda piece at NPR:

A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, confirmed to The Associated Press that Musk and Putin have had contact through calls. The person didn’t provide additional details about the frequency of the calls, when they occurred or their content.

My heart be still. The source couldn’t say when or how often the calls occurred, or even what they were about. Sure seems reliable information to me. Off with Elon’s head!

The response from SpaceX was blunt.

The Wall Street Journal published yet another incredibly misleading story about @Starlink
based upon completely unsubstantiated claims from unnamed sources.

SpaceX’s then noted its extensive help using Starlink to the Ukraine, against Russia. Reality tells us that these so-called unconfirmeed Musk-Putin conversations are not only unlikely, they would make no sense. And if they did happen, it would have certainly not been with the intent of Musk to betray the U.S. or the Ukraine. Note too that the Kremlin itself insists Musk has only talked to Putin once, “during which they discussed space and future technologies.”

In fact, this story fits the same pattern of many recent and typical leftwing media slanders against Republicans, from Supreme Court nominees to senate candidates to presidents. Based on an anonymous source who really doesn’t know much, the slander gets spread by the propaganda press as if it was the word from God, used to defame and discredit the victim. It is the same tactic as that classic journalist fake question, “So, Mister Candidate, when did you stop beating your wife?” You can deny it, but the very denial appears to condemn you.

In this case the propaganda press and the Democrats are carrying the attacks even farther. When asked about it on Meet the Press this weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders made it very clear where the Democrats now stand on free speech.

First news anchor Kristen Welker asked the question. Note how this anonymous story is now accepted by her as utter fact.

The Wall Street Journal reporting this week that Musk is, of course, a major government contractor, someone who has security clearance that gives him access to highly classified information, has been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin for the past two years. My question for you, is it appropriate for Elon Musk, a Trump supporter, to have these secret contacts with Vladimir Putin, and what, if anything, do you think the Biden administration can and should do about it?

As I noted, with our propaganda press, unconfirmed slanders of conservatives are always treated as fact, and used to further destroy them. The question was thus designed to allow Sanders to answer in exactly the right way.

No, I don’t think it’s appropriate. Look, Musk is a very smart, aggressive guy. He is the wealthiest person in the world. And what really interests me is, if, God forbid, Trump would win, whether it would be Elon Musk running the government and Trump working for him, or the other way around. But the idea that you have somebody like Musk who has massive amounts of federal contracts, campaigning hard, putting huge amounts of money into Trump’s campaign – man, if there’s ever been a conflict of interest, that’s it.

In other words, according to Sanders, Musk is not allowed his first amendment free speech rights because his companies have contracts with the government. However, we all know of course that Sanders would celebrate Musk’s campaigning entirely if it was for a Democrat. He would even consider phone calls to Putin totally appropriate, if it aids the goals of the Democrats and the communist left.

This typical Democratic Party slander campaign is now following its standard course. NASA administrator Bill Nelson has now joined the chorus, calling for an investigation of Musk. Similarly, Democrats in Congress are now demanding investigations (see here and here). Or as one of my commenters on Behind the Black noted yesterday,

The modern Democratic Party

You can almost picture Bernie Sanders kicking and hitting the floor yelling it’s not fair it’s not fair. Our new world order and economic forum will not tolerate this! How dare they reset the great reset? We control all media outlets, we tell them what and how to think, how dare they reject us?

And while we can make fun of these tinpot dictators, we must remember that tinpot dictators have through history ended up killing tens of millions of people. This is our future, should Kamala Harris win the election and the Democrats maintain some control of Congress. It is their intention to resume their aggressive blacklisting campaign begun in 2021, shortly after Biden took office, but do so now with even greater aggression. That campaign stalled because it violated numerous laws, beginning with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and has resulted in numerous successful lawsuits costing its advocates millions.

The goal should the Democrats win next week will be to make sure those laws no longer have force. As I have written numerous times, be warned. When someone tells you what they want to do, you really should believe them. Not only will Musk’s effort to colonize the solar system be stymied, the industries he has created will be destroyed, simply because he had the audacity to say he no longer supported the Democratic Party.

And that effort to smash a boot into Musk’s face will not end with Musk, but simply begin there.

To do this will require getting that second launch tower at Boca Chica operational. It will also require SpaceX to successfully restart Starship’s Raptor engines in space, something it has not yet done. Once this is demonstrated to work, the company would also have to do another orbital test where Starship is put in a full orbit and then de-orbited precisely to a point over the ocean, demonstrating that such a return can next be done reliably over land.

In other words, a tower catch can only happen after at least two more test flights. Thus, to do it early next year means SpaceX will have to establish a test launch pace of a launch every one or two months. This is actually something Musk has said repeatedly he wants to do, but has been stymied repeatedly by FAA red tape from doing it.

I suspect Musk’s tweet is expressing his unstated hope that a Trump victory in November will force the FAA to ease its bureaucratic interference.

As promised by Elon Musk, SpaceX has now filed suit against California Coastal Commission, and its commissioners, accusing it of violating Musk’s first amendment rights and using its regulatory power against the company simply because those commissioners disagree with Musk’s political positions.

You can read SpaceX’s lawsuit filing here [pdf]. From its introduction:

[The Commission has engaged in naked political discrimination against Plaintiff Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in violation of the rights of free speech and due process enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO. Second, the Commission is trying to unlawfully regulate space launch programs—which are critical to national security and other national policy objectives—at Vandenberg Space Force Base (the Base), a federal enclave and the world’s second busiest spaceport.

The lawsuit stems from the comments made by the commissioners when then voted against the military’s plan to allow SpaceX to increase its launch rate at Vandenberg spaceport to up to 50 launches per year. In those comments, the commissioners made it clear that the main reason they were voting against the motion was because they were offended by Elon Musk and his political positions, not because the company was doing anything wrong. In fact, the commissioners knew SpaceX was doing nothing wrong. As noted at the first link above:

Staff at the commission recommended that the commissioners concur with the USAF. They argued that the Air Force had committed to implementing protective measures against sonic booms, and pointed out a lack of evidence that increasing launches from 36 to 50 annually would have adverse environmental effects.

The commission’s political animus against Musk and SpaceX was further underlined by this fact noted in the lawsuit:

[T] he Commission recently approved another commercial space launch operator launching up to 60 launches a year from the same Base, accepting that this operator’s launch program, including commercial launches, are federal agency activities.

SpaceX also noted at length that the commission’s decision literally violated the commission’s own governing statue, which expressly excludes federal land from its regulatory authority. The military has full power to make this decision, and only confers with the commission out of a courtesy. In the past the commission understood this, and the two worked well together to make both happy.

Still valid, despite the desires of the thugs
on the California Coastal Commission

Nor is this lawsuit the commission’s only problem. California state assemblyman Bill Essayli has filed a public records request for all its records and communications in connection with its vote. It is almost certain those records will confirm the political animus towards Musk and provide SpaceX more evidence for its lawsuit.

Much of the commission’s behavior I think stems from the COVID epidemic of 2020. At that time the panic was so severe that the public made no objections when government officials routinely violated their oaths of office as well as the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to unilaterally impose new mandates. “We have to do something!” was the mantra, even if there was no legal right to do it.

Bad habits however can become addictive, and power can become corrupting. The commissioners appear stuck in that same mode from 2020, and have apparently assumed that they have the right to make any ruling they want, just because it is what they feel is right, regardless of their legal right to do it.

They are about to find out that it isn’t 2020, the public is no longer panicked, and that there are laws in this country.

“Filing suit against them on Monday for violating the First Amendment,” he wrote, adding: “Tuesday, since court is closed on Monday.”

At least two commissioners had made it very clear in public statements at a hearing last week that they were voting against a Space Force request that would increase the number of launches at Vandenberg because they opposed Elon Musk’s political positions, not because the request would do any harm to the coast. The commission then rejected the request 6-4, with others claiming that SpaceX should have made the request directly rather than have the Space Force do it.

The vote remains non-binding, as the Space Force has the legal power to do whatever it wants at Vandenberg, and only works with the commission as a courtesy.

According to an update today on SpaceX’s Starship webpage, the FAA has told the company to not expect a launch license for its next Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch until late November.

We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests. This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis. The four open environmental issues are illustrative of the difficulties launch companies face in the current regulatory environment for launch and reentry licensing.

This two month delay is actually a four month delay, since SpaceX had previously stated it was ready to launch in early August. At the time it appeared it would have Superheavy once again do a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Because of this situation, the company has now decided to attempt a chopstick capture landing at the launch tower at Boca Chica. Since it can’t launch, it is spending this time preparing for that more daring flight program.

SpaceX’s update goes into great detail about the absurdity of this delay, noting how it seems to have been instigated by anti-SpaceX news report from CNBC that included significant false information. The company notes at length how it has done everything requested of it by various government agencies, including the FAA, the EPA, Fish & Wildlife, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), including doing testing of the potable water used in the launchpad deluge system. At every stage these agencies agreed that the deluge system “would not cause environmental harm.”

The subsequent fines levied on SpaceX by TCEQ and the EPA are entirely tied to disagreements over paperwork. We chose to settle so that we can focus our energy on completing the missions and commitments that we have made to the U.S. government, commercial customers, and ourselves. Paying fines is extremely disappointing when we fundamentally disagree with the allegations, and we are supported by the fact that EPA has agreed that nothing about the operation of our flame deflector will need to change. Only the name of the permit has changed. [emphasis in original]

The late November date is also significant in that it pushes the test launch back until after the election, and strongly suggests that politics are involved. The Democrats who control the White House are very hostile to Musk, and are quite willing to do whatever they can to hurt him. It seems to me that they are telling him — and everyone else — that they want that test launch delayed until after the election so that if they win, they will then be in a position to stymie Musk entirely, and maybe forever.

Hat tip to reader Gary.

They’re coming for you next: Based on the behavior of loyal Democrats in the past five years, no on should be surprised by this story. Several big name Democratic Party supporters have now called for the complete censorship and imprisonment of Elon Musk for the horrible crime of disagreeing with them and campaigning for their opposition.

First we have Robert Reich, that petty dictator who was once secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton and teaches public policy at — you guessed it — the University of California in Berkeley. In an op-ed for the leftist British newspaper The Guardian, Reich claims Musk is “out of control” and for this crime he must be squelched. First he calls for a global boycott of Tesla and X but then tops this demand with some decidedly tyrannical desires:

• Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.
• In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission should demand that Musk take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals – and if he does not, sue him under Section Five of the FTC Act.
• The US government – and we taxpayers – have additional power over Musk, if we’re willing to use it. The US should terminate its contracts with him, starting with Musk’s SpaceX.

Remember, Musk’s only real crime has been to post things on X that Reich disagrees with, and that Musk cannot be “controlled” by Reich. Musk’s posts might not be correct every single time, but so what? Freedom of speech allows for such errors, and also is expressly designed to correct them by allowing even more speech countering any false claims. Moreover, what is the difference between what Musk does and what Reich does? Both are expressing their freedom of expression. While Musk supports Reich’s right to speak, Reich wants to smash his boot into Musk’s face, silencing him forever.

As for terminating all contracts with SpaceX, such a decision would be irrational and insane, considering how much the U.S. space program, its military, and American citizens now relay on the high quality products that this company produces. By this one demand Reich shows us how little he cares for America and its people. His only focus is power and “control.”

Click for video.

Next we have big time Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee bluntly stating on MSNBC that Musk should be prosecuted by his critical statements against the Democrats.

“You have somebody who runs a really strategic defense and aerospace projects for the federal government who’s actively undermining the government that’s paying him. And somewhere in that is a legal case that needs to be prosecuted,” Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners said on “The Last Word,” Saturday.

McNamee demanded that Musk’s free speech rights should be limited, simply because his companies have government contracts.

These two guys provide us the ugly face of the Democratic Party. It is for oppression and dictatorship, with it doing the oppressing and being the dictator. And woe to anyone who dares to try to stop it.

These statements also prove the point I have been making now for more than three years, that the federal bureaucracy and the White House have been teaming up to block and delay all of SpaceX’s efforts. Reich and McNamee have now told us the mindset that exists behind closed doors in the smoke-filled rooms where Democratic Party policy is established. As long as this vicious party controls the executive branch, do not expect future SpaceX efforts to proceed smoothly without major bureaucratic obstacles.

According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, SpaceX is aiming for a 2026 launch of its first unmanned Starship to Mars.

The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.

Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years.

The graphic to the right indicates the planned landing zone, with the four red dots the four prime locations. Three of the four are very flat, though they also appear to have a lot of very near-surface ice, accessible simply by digging a shovel into the ground. Attempting to land at any will definitely test Statship’s ability to land on Mars intact. A global map of Mars is shown below, showing the location of this landing zone. The map shows where researchers believe the saltiest water on Mars would be. According to this data, in the Starship landing zone some of that near-surface ice will turn to liquid brine a little less than one percent of each year. Otherwise it will be more easily processed for drinking and fuel.

As always with these ambitious predictions, Musk is aiming high, with the likelihood that this first mission will not make that ’26 date. At the same time, he is making it very clear that a first attempt will certainly happen by ’28.

I also think the timing of this announcement is intriguing, coming one day after NASA was forced to cancel the launch in October of two Mars orbiters because it could not be certain Blue Origin would have the New Glenn rocket ready on time. Musk’s response is to say that SpaceX is now about to begin regularly privately funded and privately built missions to Mars, on a schedule, essentially asking: “Which company would you choose to do things in space?”


Click for full unannotated image.

Starlink said Thursday that it will challenge De Moraes’ decision regarding the company’s bank accounts. “The order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink is liable for the fines levied against X. It was issued in secret and without giving Starlink any of the due process guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution. We intend to address the matter legally,” the company argued.

De Moraes’ deadline to appoint a new legal representative of X ended at 8.07 pm Thursday and, as expected, it was not complied with. In this scenario, the next step would be to suspend the social network in the country, for which there is still no deadline. X said in a statement that it would not comply with the judge’s “illegal decisions” aimed at “censoring“ De Moraes’ ”political opponents.”

“When we tried to defend ourselves in court, the minister threatened to arrest our legal representative in Brazil. Even after his resignation, he froze all his bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were rejected or ignored. Minister Alexandre De Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unable or unwilling to confront him,” X underlined while announcing it would be disclosing the judge’s confidential decisions against the company. X “does not comply with illegal orders in secret,” the company stressed.

“We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Justice Alexandre De Moraes is demanding that we violate Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that,” the company added.

Musk has also pointed out that Starlink is an entirely different company than X. Musk has said that since its bank accounts are presently frozen, it will provide its users service for free, since “Many remote schools and hospitals depend on SpaceX’s Starlink.” He however soon expects De Moraes to shut down this service soon as well. He has also called De Moraes an “”an outright criminal” whom he expects to end up behind bars someday for his censorious and illegal rulings.

When Elon Musk on August 2, 2024 proudly tweeted a picture of SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine, the third iteration of the engine it uses on this Starship/Superheavy rocket, Tori Bruno, the CEO of ULA, looked at the image (to the right) and complained that Musk and SpaceX were touting pictures of a “partially assembled engine.” As Bruno tweeted:

They have done an excellent job making the assembly simpler and more producible. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.

It turns out that this engine is so advanced that Bruno — the CEO of SpaceX’s best competitor — didn’t understand it. Both Musk and SpaceX’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell immediately responded with images of this same engine operating during hot fire tests. As Shotwell tweeted, “Works pretty good for a ‘partially assembled’ engine :).”

Musk in one of his first tweets describing the engine’s specifications was also right when he described it as “Truly, a work of art.” Look at it. For what is the most powerful rocket engine ever built it looks as streamlined and a simple as the slant-6 car engine I had in my 1969 Plymouth Valient, built long before environmental regulations caused car engines to become incredibly overbuilt and complicated.

This little anecdote illustrates quite starkly how advanced SpaceX is over its competitors. It is now building rocket engines with technology beyond the immediate understanding of the CEO of the United States’ second largest rocket company.

Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same, and only one company, Rocket Lab, is doing flight tests in an attempt to eventually do so.

SpaceX has no competition because too many of its competitors are simply not trying to compete. It is both sad and shameful.

Hat tip to reader Rex Ridenoure.

Almost immediately after the European Union announced today that it considered X in violation of its Digital Services Act (DSA), claiming that the social media company owned by Elon Musk was breaking the act “in areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers,” Elon Musk responded most bluntly in a tweet:

The European Commission offered 𝕏 an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us.

The other platforms accepted that deal.

𝕏 did not.

In other words, the EU tried to blackmail X and Musk into censoring some users of X, based on criteria that EU chose. When X refused to play that game, the EU followed through with today’s announcement, threatening the following if Musk does not kow-tow:

If the Commission’s preliminary views were to be ultimately confirmed, the Commission would adopt a non-compliance decision finding that X is in breach of Articles 25, 39 and 40(12) of the DSA. Such a decision could entail fines of up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the provider, and order the provider to take measures to address the breach. A non-compliance decision may also trigger an enhanced supervision period to ensure compliance with the measures the provider intends to take to remedy the breach. The Commission can also impose periodic penalty payments to compel a platform to comply.

A close read of the EU’s complaints about X suggests it simply doesn’t like the level of freedom and control the company allows for its users, as well as for itself. The EU doesn’t like that “anyone can subscribe to obtain such a ‘verified” status” and that X “does not allow for the required supervision and research into emerging risks brought about by the distribution of advertising online [emphasis mine].” Furthermore, it appears the EU wants X to provide free access to all of the company’s data, especially its “application programming interface,” something that seems to be proprietary information any company would wish to protect.

Even if the EU’s demands were reasonable, that it offered Musk a “secret deal” to avoid this action by censoring those the EU doesn’t like suggests it is as corrupt as many say it is. The game is power, and power alone, and the EU bureaucrats don’t like that Elon Musk does not bootlick them.

I would also be very curious what the other platforms are that agreed to this EU censorship deal. Could it be companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, etc? Think about that the next time you attempt a Google search for a particular political news story and the only sources that show up are those of the propaganda press.

The lawfare won’t stop until morale improves! A new lawsuit has been filed against Elon Musk by eight former SpaceX employees, who now accuse him of sexually harassing them by his sometimes pointed tweets on X, calling those tweets “juvenile, grotesque sexual banter.”

The suit also says Musk’s tweets “had the wholly foreseeable and intentional result of encouraging other employees to engage in similar conduct.”

At SpaceX’s Hawthorne offices, the suit claims, company meetings and employees mimicked Musk’s humor. At meetings, the lawsuit alleges, senior engineers called mechanical parts “chodes” and “schlongs.” A camera that was placed on the bottom of a second-stage Falcon rocket was referred to as the “Upskirt Camera,” and a structure used by astronauts to transfer from SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station was called the “Fun Tunnel,” a euphemism for anal sex.

Read the whole article. The complaints are quite hilarious. These employees need to get a life. This is all silly stuff, hardly worth even two nanoseconds of concern.

Unfortunately, these anti-Musk employees do have a life, and it is a very sad one, consumed wholly with destroying Musk, not accomplishing anything worthwhile on their own. These eight former employees are the same ones who were fired after they published an internal letter in SpaceX calling for others in the company to denounce Musk for his tweets. Following their firing they also instigated a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suit against Musk, which is presently suspended because SpaceX is claiming the NLRB’s very existence is unconstitutional, and no further action on the complaint will occur until the courts decide on that claim.

This new lawsuit is simply another example of new harassment of Musk by these former employees.

The EIS will be the second environmental review involving SpaceX’s plans to use LC-39A for Starship launches. NASA completed an environmental assessment (EA) in 2019 of the company’s plans at the time to build launch infrastructure at LC-39A for Starship, finding it would have no significant impact. At the time SpaceX was planning up to 24 Starship launches from that pad annually. A new EIS, the FAA concluded, is needed because of changes in the design of Starship and its operations since the 2019 assessment.

The FAA claims a new assessment is needed because SpaceX is now planning as many as 44 launches. The Air Force has not said why its new assessment is needed. That EIS, which began in March, covers a launchpad previously used by the Saturn-1B and Delta-4 rockets from 1964 to 2022, another pad use by the Air Force’s Titan rocket from 1965 to 2005, as well as a new pad, dubbed SLC-50.

LC-39A meanwhile has been used for launches since the 1960s. The Saturn-5, the space shuttle, and the Falcon 9 all launched from this pad.

The dishonest absurdity of these impact statements can not be overstated. There is zero reason to do new assessments. All the pads have been in use for decades, with all kinds of rockets, some comparable to Superheavy/Starship. The environment and the wildlife refuge at Cape Canaveral have both thrived.

Moreover, to force completely new impact statements because the design and plans for Superheavy/Starship have changed somewhat (but not fundamentally) is even more stupid. This is a new rocket, being developed day-by-day and launch-by-launch. Will the FAA and the Air Force require new EIS’s every time SpaceX changes anything? It seems so.

This is clearly lawfare against Elon Musk and SpaceX by the White House and the administration state. It doesn’t like Musk, and it is now searching at all times for ways to block or damage him.

I confidently predict that neither statement will be completed by the end of 2025. Based on the timeline of most EIS’s, which when politics are involved are almost always slowed by the legal action of activists, the earliest either will be approved will be mid-2026, though likely later.

What is not clear is whether the FAA and Air Force will stop all work while this red tape is being unwound. If so, then the first operational launches of Superheavy and Starship cannot happen out of Cape Canaveral until well into 2027, which means NASA entire Artemis program will be seriously delayed. My previous prediction that the first manned lunar landing can’t happen before 2030 is becoming increasingly too conservative.

And remember this: If Joe Biden and the Democrats remain in power after November, all bets are off. At that point they are certain to ramp up the lawfare against those they see as political enemies, even if their targets are doing great things for the nation and the American people.