Is Musk Still an Asset, or is He Becoming a Liability?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Earlier SN10 Starship prototype bursting into flames and exploding soon after landing. (NASASpaceflight)

Last week, The Wall Street Journal had a good story on Elon Musk titled “Elon Musk’s Latest Antics Have Some Asking: Is He Out of Touch?” It discuses his frat-like behavior challenging Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to a fight, his strange behavior at Twitter, and the shrinking set of friends and colleagues able to keep him from going adrift in his own bubble. The story notes:

Such antics are leading some Musk supporters to worry aloud that he has lost touch, saying he is ensconced in a distorted reality that is warping his perspective and threatening his businesses at a time when he is trying to oversee multiple companies in different industries.

Of course, one of those companies is SpaceX, which has become the backbone of NASA and the US satellite industry. SpaceX also runs Starlink, which is now a key part of the battle against Russia as it supplies Internet services to the Ukrainian military.

Musk has styled himself as the Trump of Technology – breaking established rules, failing to pay his bills, attacking critics (in-house, as well), and generally seeing what he can get away with before it all collapses.

Can one distracted man manage all of these companies? Should one distracted man manage all of these companies? And should our government be so reliant on him in the space and defense arenas? Or is SpaceX becoming the next Wagner Group, a government-funded satellite that is starting to think it is smarter than its paymaster? We all know how that ended.

You can hear more about this reliance on one man in a recent On With Kara Swisher podcast, Why We Can’t Quit Elon with Ronan Farrow & William Cohan. Here are the podcast notes:

We’re talking about Elon – again – but this time we’re looking at the big picture: the tech titan’s “unprecedented power” over our the federal government and national security, as encapsulated in Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ronan Farrow’s latest New Yorker profile. William Cohan, a financial journalist and founding partner of Puck News, also joins to break down the varying fortunes of SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, and the sustainability of those companies under a leader that is ambitious, but capricious. Stay til the end to hear Kara tell Nayeema why, despite his shenanigans, she still has empathy for Elon Musk.

You should also check out Ronan Farrow’s The New Yorker article, “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule.” While acknowledging that some industrialists have had inordinate influence over US politics in the past, the piece notes:

But Musk’s influence is more brazen and expansive. There is little precedent for a civilian’s becoming the arbiter of a war between nations in such a granular way, or for the degree of dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk in a variety of fields, from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space. 

This really doesn’t sound all that sustainable, or wise. I hope Uncle Sam has a Plan B should Musk run it all into the ground or walks away with all of his marbles (assuming has has any left).

Space Quote: What’s the Launch Date for Artemis III?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA

“We really are trying to get in the details of that schedule because when we come up with a date, December of 2025, or whatever that date might be, we want to have confidence for our teams, that we all have a realistic path to get there.” 

-Statement by Jim Free, NASA associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development, regarding the launch date of the Artemis III mission, as reported in Florida Today. The story highlights the potential delays related to SpaceX’s Starship and Axiom’s space suits.

Pic of the Week: Starship Prepares for a Future Flight

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): June 26, 2023 Starship engine test viewed from above. (SpaceX)

The image above shows the SpaceX Ship 25 rocket from above as it tested it engines on June 26, 2023. Presumably, Elon Musk was tweeting out this and other such shots, but given the restrictions placed on Twitter these days, you may not be able to acquire this on your own without an account.

As far as the next Starship launch, the exact date has yet to be shared. However, NASA is already talking about delaying the Artemis III lunar mission, which will use the Starship, from 2025 to 2026.

ESA’s Euclid Space Telescope Safely Launched

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: ESA

Earier today, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Space Telescope was safely launched from Cape Canaveral on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket (though the original plan was to use a Russian Soyuz rocket until the invasion nixed that idea). The space telescope is destined for the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), which is an average distance of 1 million miles beyond Earth’s orbit. It will join the James Webb Space Telescope.

In addition to the 1.2 meter diameter telescope, the mission includes two scientific instruments: a visible-wavelength camera (the VISible instrument, VIS) and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer (the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP). 

The focus of the new space telescope will be to create a 3D map of the universe to better understand dark matter and dark energy. As noted on the ESA’s website, Euclid hopes to answer these questions:

  • What is the structure and history of the cosmic web?
  • What is the nature of dark matter?
  • How has the expansion of the Universe changed over time?
  • What is the nature of dark energy?
  • Is our understanding of gravity complete?

It is a tall order for this new telescope. Astronomer Isobel Hook from the UK’s Lancaster University put it this way to BBC News:

It will be like setting off on a ship before people knew where land was in different directions. We’ll be mapping out the Universe to try to understand where we fit into it and how we’ve got here – how the whole Universe got from the point of the Big Bang to the beautiful galaxies we see around us, the Solar System and to life.

Starlink: DOD Pays for Ukrainian Service

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Map of Ukraine. (BBC News)

Elon Musk got his way. The US Department of Defense (DOD) will be paying an undisclosed amount for the Starlink services being used in Ukraine. This is good news for the Ukrainians had they feared interruption of this vital link with the rest of the world, yet I imagine this will also put SpaceX’s Starlink system at greater risk given that it now is a clearly a subcontractor to the US defense initiatives.

As the media has pointed out, Musk started to cut back on Starlink services to make a point about it being used as part of the war, with one Senator noting:

I was personally disappointed to see discontinuation of full services at such a critical time for Ukraine self-defense…Do you feel there’s a connection between the availability of this capability to our partners in Ukraine in this conflict, and relationships we have with companies like SpaceX?

It appears the relationship has improved now that DOD has opened its checkbook. I guess the next move will be taken by the Russians. And if the past is any guide, things may get ugly.