More establishment-connected companies, like Boeing and United Launch Alliance, have suffered various technical issues that leave them essentially incapable of doing half what SpaceX does, despite much higher prices.
I can’t help but feel that Musk’s sheer effectiveness, in comparison to establishment failures on everything from COVID to Afghanistan to China, serves as a constant reproach.
Even the bid to “rein him in” is failing.
The effort to end-run his ownership of Twitter with Threads, a product of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has been a flop.
And as an exposé, so is the Farrow piece.
Through it we learn that although Musk was happy to make his Starlink satellite Internet service available to Ukraine when that country was invaded, he was uncomfortable seeing it turned into a backbone of the war effort.
He also had the temerity to ask to be paid, though other suppliers to Ukraine — Raytheon, say — were not providing product gratis.
Now it’s lawyer time, with the Justice Department suing SpaceX for not hiring immigrants and refugees, though US law bans disclosing technical information relating to rockets and space to non-US citizens.
Musk tweeted: “SpaceX was told repeatedly that hiring anyone who was not a permanent resident of the United States would violate international arms trafficking law, which would be a criminal offense. We couldn’t even hire Canadian citizens, despite Canada being part of NORAD!”
Nobody’s perfect.