And still, otherwise sober-seeming people on this site continue to make excuses and give him the benefit of the doubt that he has some kind of good intentions.
"It would also wreck the business plans of multiple US companies working to provide this capability for NASA. Moreover, it would shoulder even more responsibility for the US space enterprise onto a single company, SpaceX."
---
This hits it on the nose. Musk is using his political influence to lock out the competition and siphon billions of government spending to his own company. It's a crystal clear conflict of interest and exposes the real purpose of DOGE.
"Let's go to Mars" is a lot more ominous than it used to be, knowing who will be in charge of such a venture and their attitudes on, idk, everything involving society.
The push to the Moon was a national project that resulted from the vision of an elected leader with at least some controls on his power, and never promised to create a society beyond the authorities of Earth. Musk's push to Mars is the opposite.
The ISS is old and is only getting older, but if it means having a place to do some science that would otherwise not be done, and draining funds that would otherwise be used by an ethically-questionable human being to make himself the emperor of Mars... keep it in orbit.
> "Let's go to Mars" is a lot more ominous than it used to be, knowing who will be in charge of such a venture and their attitudes on, idk, everything involving society.
What's the old saying about homeowners associations keeping Nazis busy so they can't do damage elsewhere? The quicker we can get this guy to Mars and set him up as Emperor God of Mars, the quicker we can get him out of our hair.
He never believed we would get to Mars or that there would be a self-sustained colony. Mars has only ever been a pipe dream about bilking the world's largest governments for the fattest contract in all of history.
That'll be ok for a couple hundred years, but not nearly long enough. Will get real bad after. And at the cost of ignoring extreme iniquity for a long long time.
> "Let's go to Mars" is a lot more ominous than it used to be, knowing who will be in charge of such a venture and their attitudes on, idk, everything involving society.
On the bright side, it'll happen, one might predict, about 6 months maybe 12 months at the outside after a Tesla has completed a fully autonomous coast to coast drive.
> This original statement was somewhat ambiguous. Last July, NASA awarded Space X an $843 million contract to modify a Dragon spacecraft to serve as a propulsive vehicle to safely guide the aging space station into the Pacific Ocean in 2030. So in some sense, preparations are already underway to shut down the laboratory.
> I asked Musk if he meant that NASA and the US government should commit to the 2030 end-of-life date, or if he wanted to accelerate the timeline for the station's demise.
> "The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend 2 years from now," Musk replied.
So it's not like this is coming completely out of the blue, but it's hilarious Elon's continued heel turn. He went anti-tech, abandoned his environmental/EV fans, and now he takes aim at space nerds? Are there any of his original supporters left to piss off?
He literally only made this comment because the commander of the ISS called him a liar. He is so thin-skinned that he is willing to explode the entire space station ahead of schedule just to retaliate over a Tweet.
"Narcissistic rage is an extreme reaction that can occur when someone with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) feels their self-importance is threatened. It can be triggered by criticism, loss of control, or even minor setbacks."
We should start teaching children emotional intelligence daily in K-12, including niche topics like how to spot sociopaths, narcissists, ..., and all other forms of monsters. Perhaps in a generation we can learn to stop giving these deeply damaged and dangerous people any kind of power over us.
I'm not the one flagging them but I can understand why people don't think hacker news is the place for Elon Musk news anymore; while he is tech adjacent most of these articles are about politics and can be found on regular news sites.
The tech billionaire overlords want you to think that tech is by default apolitical.
It is not. Tech increasingly controls human lives, insofar is the way things are coded only allow for outcomes consistent with the codebase (whether intentional outcomes or not), that are dictated by the user's flow through the codebase. When you control a human life's outcomes, you are doing something explicitly political.
Every dollar flowing into X, Amazon, Meta is now a dollar that ladders up directly (Elon Musk) or indirectly (donations to Trump) to the current administration.
When anyone can donate unlimited amounts to SuperPACs--when money is regarded as speech--then everything with a dollar value is political.
Until political campaigns are funded by tax dollars, and capped at that level, everything that is touched by money, not just tech, is political.
Space nerds are pretty meh on the ISS. It's cool but it served its purpose. Nobody is gonna cry if it dies a little earlier. We should have our sights set on bigger and better things.
Yeah, one of their modules is leaking in a sketchy way and they wanna dip. I'm sure politics and money play a non-trivial role but at the end of the day if the Russians won't put their people in it nobody should put people in it.
> at the end of the day if the Russians won't put their people in it nobody should
Ha, fair point ;-)
> I'm sure politics play a non-trivial role
Yeah, they may get paid to fly supply missions, but it's still a tiny bit uncomfortable to claim on TV how they are cooperating with the "evil Anglo-Saxons" (their strange propaganda term for the West) to supply the ISS.
AFAIK, the Russian half is lucky to still be intact today. It wouldn't surprise me if the Russian Federation has wanted to deorbit it for decades simply due to the burden of repair and resupply missions.
> Russian Federation has wanted to deorbit it for decades simply due to the burden of repair and resupply missions.
They do get paid for it? I'd imagine it's bringing in a chunk of change and they'd be happy to let it keep flying. But as a sibling post, politically it's not advantageous for them perhaps.
Watching that clip (just the video, muted) from the interview, their demeanor reminds me of the characters sketched by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn: the Duke, and the King.
I like the idea of the ISS and I want the ISS to remain.. With that said I do think it's past it's expiration date and we should replace it with something better.
If anything his interest is to keep the space station since SpaceX is the preferred, and now the only provider of transportation to/from the station.
It's actually a pretty clever way to avoid the conflict, have others push to keep the space station and thus the necessary transport contracts with SpaceX. Not only this but it also aligns with his stated decades-long goal of focusing on a manned mission to Mars.
It's amazing how much "galaxy brain 4d chess" these musk huffers play with themselves to justify the stupidity.
"Uh, no, you don't see the brilliance! He's advocating for deorbiting the ISS while calling astronauts retarded to trick people into keeping the ISS up and running!"
SMDH.
You don't have to justify his every thought. The simplest answer is typically the right one.
So the simplest answer is that he is giving up immediate recurring transport revenue to the existing station for a chance at launch contracts for a future station that may or may not be built?
Quite the galaxy brained idea indeed. Keep in mind however that the galaxy is mostly vacuum.
Youtuber @Thunderf00t claims that none of Musk's businesses are actually profitable. Musk is only rich because he traded his shares of a failing X.com (the bank) for Paypal shares in trade, mostly, for stopping to sabotage Paypal online, then did little or nothing at Paypal until Ebay bought him out. Tesla is losing money hand over fist, and disaster is turning to catastrophe with Musk's recent antics. SpaceX is losing money (and would be hemorrhaging money if not for US government spending). Starlink is losing money. Neuralink is losing money. Xai is losing money. The Boring company is bankrupt. X has lost at minimum 75% of it's value since Musk took over, and is running at a loss.
Musk's talent is not tech, and it's not "first principles" or anything like that. His talent is getting idiot investors to invest ... and not ask for their money back until it's far too late.
Thunderf00t's claim is that Musk is not taking over the government out of patriotism, but because his businesses are 100% dependent on continued government investment, because they're burning through investor cash. MASSIVE continued government investment.
The general theory being that Musk has dethroned Bernie Madoff as the biggest US fraudster ever, that this has already happened, but won't come out until fresh government money stops increasing, we just don't know it yet.
It’s so interesting that, like if Musk wanted to rest in his laurels a bit that he would still be known as one of the greatest innovators/entrepeneurs of all time, but yeah, I think two things are true that he is and that he’s way over his skis in almost every way and has no clear path to fix any of it.
Stop spreading misinformation. Check your facts before you post them.
Neuralink is losing money
What an absolutely ridiculous thing to say about an early stage startup, working diligently on creating a valuable new medical technology, with significant publicly visible progress. Especially ridiculous to say on this platform.
How can you even write this? "SpaceX turned a profix. Most of it's income is from Starlink".
Yes, that obviously means it's not investor cash, that it's real profit, right? Entirely reasonable view, that. In Europe this is called a "carousel" (named after the old French merry-go-rounds) and it's almost always a form of fraud.
The reason this is often fraud is that they pay each other in fake, but not fake according to accounting rules, money. Lots of things are money "equivalents" in accounting. Loans given out. Shares. Letters of credit. Goodwill. Etc. The way you implement this fraud is that you make SpaceX buy something expensive from Starlink and vice-versa. Then you pay this with anything that is not money (e.g. shares, loan, delays on payments due, ...), that have been freshly printed by the company. Now, by accounting rules, the value of both companies has gone up by (if you do it right) twice the value of the zero-dollar exchange. This is what's going on with companies when their income/revenue is high ... and "somehow" their cashflow is low (both companies publish their income/revenue ... but hide their cashflow statements. "I wonder why")
One of the ways to do this ... which for "some reason" we'll call the Amazon trick is to start 2 companies. Then get cashflow going between them. To illustrate let's buy a bakery. You split the bakery. One company is the store. One company actually bakes the goods to be sold. The relevant part of this is that it's exactly the same as before, except there's now (virtual) cashflow between the two companies. Initially, you buy a pie, the cash is immediately divided up between the store and the bakery. Then you load up the bakery AND the store with debt, by slowly increasing the terms of payment. Settlement-after-15-days. Then 30. Then 60. Then 90. Then 6 months. The key is that the cashflow gets going, and is assumed in accounting to extend into infinity. Now look at what happens. If the s series is what the store makes and p is what it pays to the bakery. Now look at the profits:
So the second months REVENUE goes 100% into your pocket (it's not profit, it's used to buy shares from you, read on). Now change to 60 days. 90 days. 6 months.
Now do the same, but pay in shares of the bakery (while taking out bank loans). If you have cash flow you can do this for at least half a year's revenue (which you get on both sides of the equation if, like Musk, you own both companies, so you get a full year's REVENUE (not profit, revenue) in your pocket, free). And if you now sell the company with the "massive increase in profit" ... AND since the store has signed a contract to pay (and has ideally a long history of paying), it's very easy to get (ideally) investors, but also banks to cover this amount. Who do they buy the shares from? From you! And if you're truly desperate, like Musk, who is buying the shares of the store? The bakery! And who is buying the shares of the bakery? The store! If you look at how this happens, you will realize that it's near impossible for states or banks to stop this, and investors, frankly, don't even try.
And of course, this is totally not what happened with SpaceX and Starlink. Oh, and, obviously, there's reasons that Musk would never ever do this if SpaceX turned a profit (he'd be stealing from himself, essentially). Frauds, all frauds, are dependent on the original investor getting out, or in this case, on Musk selling shares. And, surprise, surprise, Musk has done this kind of split and he is selling shares like mad ...
Tesla is similar. If you take out government subsidies, Tesla is losing money hand over fist. That includes the Federal government buying "cybertrucks", which is such an incredibly bad idea on so many different levels.
Yes and according to the article, there are still interesting things planned in the meantime. Meanwhile, who would benefit from working on and sending a replacement up?
The article didn't mention anything interesting. Perhaps they would have if there was going to be actually interesting work?
Perhaps Musk knows what's scheduled to take place and in his opinion its all a waste of time. Just because someone else thinks it is important doesn't mean it does. I think it's fine to have the conversation, especially if it saves money, considering the US is 10's of trillions in debt.
We don't have to speculate ("perhaps"); it was an outburst because his feelings got hurt by an astronaut. It's there for anyone to read because it all happened in public.
That's fine to discuss. That's how things normally happen - someone does the analysis, writes the report, people consider it and maybe implement it. Either way it results in some justification and future accountability.
In Decisivly Optimizing for General Efficiency I'd recommend to resurrect and reinstate project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket) from 1962. 550 tons to LEO launched out of the ocean. No platform necessary, dead simple, and cheap materials, instead of relying on complicated toys from big boys.
And then build some real things up there, not tiny tin cans with foul air.
Guy that identifies as vaguely libertarian keeps expressing libertarian opinions. He gathers so much power that it's news whenever it happens. But it has to be little less shocking by now.
In this case it was prompted by an astronaut calling him out on social media about lies he told about the ISS in an interview. Part of his response to was to call for deorbiting the station. It's the precise sort of thing you see from a five year old who's losing at a game or something. "Yeah... well... I'll just not play at all! And we'll not have a game!"
It's scheduled to be deorbited in 5 years, but Musk thinks it should be done in 2 years... IS DEMOCRACY AT RISK IN AMERICA?!?!
The current administration will attempt to do many dumb things, like any human beings. Crying wolf at every action or opinion diminishes the other side's creditability for when it matters. This is bad for all of us.
He had a toddler's reaction to being fact-checked by an astronaut on Twitter, and because he's him that has policy and spending implications for our government. While he's "just an advisor with no direct power" (to one audience—a court) but "in charge" to another and to all appearances very much is running some important operations.
This shouldn't be ignored, it's one of a thousand things that have happened lately that, very much in living memory, would (any one of them!) have for-sure and for excellent reasons been the end of someone's influence on public life. All of those matter.
That's certainly a point of disagreement. I think this absolutely should be ignored.
Him saying the ISS should be deorbited after 27 years rather than 30 years isn't a disqualifying opinion.
Freaking out at perfectly valid opinions or actions is a bad thing to do. If you are constantly screaming over nothing, you'll be tuned out, and that's bad for when there are real things to scream about.
Leaders of our government (apparently he is one, now) proposing policy changes because they're throwing little-baby tantrums on social media is definitely something worth worrying about.
> will attempt to do many dumb things, like any human beings
Most human beings aren't in charge of the free world and whose decisions have cascading effects on everyone.
And those that are generally tend to be fairly elected and confirmed with a set of checks and balances governing their actions to limit the impact of stupid decisions. Elon Musk is none of those.
He called the astronaut who called out his lies "fully retarded": https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1892584783064052114
He's also gutting the FDA, USAID, CFPB, and FAA, all institutions that his businesses have come in conflict with: https://bsky.app/profile/rbreich.bsky.social/post/3likloythd...
And according to the WSJ, Yaccarino is now threatening advertisers to spend more money, "or else": https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1892659483806924994
And still, otherwise sober-seeming people on this site continue to make excuses and give him the benefit of the doubt that he has some kind of good intentions.
You know what they say about the road to hell, perhaps it's a hypothesis based on empirical observation of our trajectory?
In this case it would be "The road to hell is paved with assumptions of good intention".
anyone still assuming good faith actions at this point is either a rube, or a bot
"... glowing press releases that nothing can ever go wrong."
So your point is let's try bad intentions?
That's already happening.
We seem to be doing just that right now, and it doesn’t seem it’s working.
"It would also wreck the business plans of multiple US companies working to provide this capability for NASA. Moreover, it would shoulder even more responsibility for the US space enterprise onto a single company, SpaceX."
---
This hits it on the nose. Musk is using his political influence to lock out the competition and siphon billions of government spending to his own company. It's a crystal clear conflict of interest and exposes the real purpose of DOGE.
"Let's go to Mars" is a lot more ominous than it used to be, knowing who will be in charge of such a venture and their attitudes on, idk, everything involving society.
The push to the Moon was a national project that resulted from the vision of an elected leader with at least some controls on his power, and never promised to create a society beyond the authorities of Earth. Musk's push to Mars is the opposite.
The ISS is old and is only getting older, but if it means having a place to do some science that would otherwise not be done, and draining funds that would otherwise be used by an ethically-questionable human being to make himself the emperor of Mars... keep it in orbit.
> "Let's go to Mars" is a lot more ominous than it used to be, knowing who will be in charge of such a venture and their attitudes on, idk, everything involving society.
What's the old saying about homeowners associations keeping Nazis busy so they can't do damage elsewhere? The quicker we can get this guy to Mars and set him up as Emperor God of Mars, the quicker we can get him out of our hair.
He never believed we would get to Mars or that there would be a self-sustained colony. Mars has only ever been a pipe dream about bilking the world's largest governments for the fattest contract in all of history.
That'll be ok for a couple hundred years, but not nearly long enough. Will get real bad after. And at the cost of ignoring extreme iniquity for a long long time.
> "Let's go to Mars" is a lot more ominous than it used to be, knowing who will be in charge of such a venture and their attitudes on, idk, everything involving society.
On the bright side, it'll happen, one might predict, about 6 months maybe 12 months at the outside after a Tesla has completed a fully autonomous coast to coast drive.
https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/
Musk is making us want to go to Mars because of his and his partner Trump destabilization of this planet: political, societical, and environmental.
> This original statement was somewhat ambiguous. Last July, NASA awarded Space X an $843 million contract to modify a Dragon spacecraft to serve as a propulsive vehicle to safely guide the aging space station into the Pacific Ocean in 2030. So in some sense, preparations are already underway to shut down the laboratory.
> I asked Musk if he meant that NASA and the US government should commit to the 2030 end-of-life date, or if he wanted to accelerate the timeline for the station's demise.
> "The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible. I recommend 2 years from now," Musk replied.
So it's not like this is coming completely out of the blue, but it's hilarious Elon's continued heel turn. He went anti-tech, abandoned his environmental/EV fans, and now he takes aim at space nerds? Are there any of his original supporters left to piss off?
He literally only made this comment because the commander of the ISS called him a liar. He is so thin-skinned that he is willing to explode the entire space station ahead of schedule just to retaliate over a Tweet.
"Narcissistic rage is an extreme reaction that can occur when someone with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) feels their self-importance is threatened. It can be triggered by criticism, loss of control, or even minor setbacks."
We should start teaching children emotional intelligence daily in K-12, including niche topics like how to spot sociopaths, narcissists, ..., and all other forms of monsters. Perhaps in a generation we can learn to stop giving these deeply damaged and dangerous people any kind of power over us.
>Are there any of his original supporters left to piss off?
Fans of Atlas Shrugged
Yeah, the people flagging every single one of these stories...
I'm not the one flagging them but I can understand why people don't think hacker news is the place for Elon Musk news anymore; while he is tech adjacent most of these articles are about politics and can be found on regular news sites.
The tech billionaire overlords want you to think that tech is by default apolitical.
It is not. Tech increasingly controls human lives, insofar is the way things are coded only allow for outcomes consistent with the codebase (whether intentional outcomes or not), that are dictated by the user's flow through the codebase. When you control a human life's outcomes, you are doing something explicitly political.
Every dollar flowing into X, Amazon, Meta is now a dollar that ladders up directly (Elon Musk) or indirectly (donations to Trump) to the current administration.
When anyone can donate unlimited amounts to SuperPACs--when money is regarded as speech--then everything with a dollar value is political.
Until political campaigns are funded by tax dollars, and capped at that level, everything that is touched by money, not just tech, is political.
Feelsbadman
> Are there any of his original supporters left to piss off?
Oh, yeah; some people can rationalise anything if they're sufficiently emotionally invested in a figure.
> Are there any of his original supporters left to piss off?
I mean, it seems like a fair number of them don’t care what he does, or how - he’s a “genius” and everything he does is perfect, much like his VP.
Excuses will always abound.
Space nerds are pretty meh on the ISS. It's cool but it served its purpose. Nobody is gonna cry if it dies a little earlier. We should have our sights set on bigger and better things.
Perhaps, but I suspect space nerds in general support geo-collaborative space efforts over privatized ones taking the reins.
Well sure, it's a pretty left leaning community, but what people support most at the end of the day is progress.
Mussolini got the trains to run on time!
You think you are funny?
I think "progress" has been used for justification of all manner of horrors.
Is this the consensus on Tiangong as well?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230502-a-fiery-end-how-...
Weren't the Russians pulling out of supporting it in 2025?
> Russia has even suggested it may pull out of the ISS as early as 2025.
Though I couldn't find an actual quote from Roscosmos just a BBC article.
Yeah, one of their modules is leaking in a sketchy way and they wanna dip. I'm sure politics and money play a non-trivial role but at the end of the day if the Russians won't put their people in it nobody should put people in it.
> at the end of the day if the Russians won't put their people in it nobody should
Ha, fair point ;-)
> I'm sure politics play a non-trivial role
Yeah, they may get paid to fly supply missions, but it's still a tiny bit uncomfortable to claim on TV how they are cooperating with the "evil Anglo-Saxons" (their strange propaganda term for the West) to supply the ISS.
AFAIK, the Russian half is lucky to still be intact today. It wouldn't surprise me if the Russian Federation has wanted to deorbit it for decades simply due to the burden of repair and resupply missions.
> Russian Federation has wanted to deorbit it for decades simply due to the burden of repair and resupply missions.
They do get paid for it? I'd imagine it's bringing in a chunk of change and they'd be happy to let it keep flying. But as a sibling post, politically it's not advantageous for them perhaps.
Perfect, lets send him into orbit as a replacement
So Andreas Mogensen, "commander of ISS for Exp 70", posted:
>> Hannity: You’re going to help rescue two astronauts
>> Musk: They were left up there for political reasons
> What a lie.
> And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.
* https://twitter.com/Astro_Andreas/status/1892517170384392664
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Mogensen
The response to that was:
> You are fully retarded.
> 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.
> Idiot.
* https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1892584783064052114
Watching that clip (just the video, muted) from the interview, their demeanor reminds me of the characters sketched by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn: the Duke, and the King.
Elon is so immature sometimes (most of the time lately it seems)
He used to make an effort to hide it.
What is the supposed pushback for political reasons? Because this supposed pushback would only have worked for Trump, definitely not against him.
Let’s de-orbit it to be able to facilitate a new contract and a new design for new money. This time private “for mars”
If Musk wants to go to Mars, he has enough money to do it on his own.
Why use your own money when you can use others' and turn a profit?
I like the idea of the ISS and I want the ISS to remain.. With that said I do think it's past it's expiration date and we should replace it with something better.
[flagged]
What makes you think that he has to justify his opinion to you? What in your resume makes you the arbiter of independent thought?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/20/business/elon-musk-wealth-gov...
Waste and inefficiency
Good thing there’s no conflict of interest in the owner of SpaceX advocating for the destruction of a successful international space project.
If anything his interest is to keep the space station since SpaceX is the preferred, and now the only provider of transportation to/from the station.
It's actually a pretty clever way to avoid the conflict, have others push to keep the space station and thus the necessary transport contracts with SpaceX. Not only this but it also aligns with his stated decades-long goal of focusing on a manned mission to Mars.
I think it far more likely that he wants NASA to contract out building a new space station.
It's amazing how much "galaxy brain 4d chess" these musk huffers play with themselves to justify the stupidity.
"Uh, no, you don't see the brilliance! He's advocating for deorbiting the ISS while calling astronauts retarded to trick people into keeping the ISS up and running!"
SMDH.
You don't have to justify his every thought. The simplest answer is typically the right one.
So the simplest answer is that he is giving up immediate recurring transport revenue to the existing station for a chance at launch contracts for a future station that may or may not be built?
Quite the galaxy brained idea indeed. Keep in mind however that the galaxy is mostly vacuum.
Bro literally has the keys to the kingdom.
Now imagine how much business schlepping an entirely new space station, piece by piece, will generate!
Or he cheaped out on quality.
Were the Dragon capsule missions not turning a profit?
Youtuber @Thunderf00t claims that none of Musk's businesses are actually profitable. Musk is only rich because he traded his shares of a failing X.com (the bank) for Paypal shares in trade, mostly, for stopping to sabotage Paypal online, then did little or nothing at Paypal until Ebay bought him out. Tesla is losing money hand over fist, and disaster is turning to catastrophe with Musk's recent antics. SpaceX is losing money (and would be hemorrhaging money if not for US government spending). Starlink is losing money. Neuralink is losing money. Xai is losing money. The Boring company is bankrupt. X has lost at minimum 75% of it's value since Musk took over, and is running at a loss.
Musk's talent is not tech, and it's not "first principles" or anything like that. His talent is getting idiot investors to invest ... and not ask for their money back until it's far too late.
@Thunderf00t's latest video about the Starship crash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0uFO6BjWSs
But the whole channel is interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/@Thunderf00t/videos
Thunderf00t's claim is that Musk is not taking over the government out of patriotism, but because his businesses are 100% dependent on continued government investment, because they're burning through investor cash. MASSIVE continued government investment.
The general theory being that Musk has dethroned Bernie Madoff as the biggest US fraudster ever, that this has already happened, but won't come out until fresh government money stops increasing, we just don't know it yet.
It’s so interesting that, like if Musk wanted to rest in his laurels a bit that he would still be known as one of the greatest innovators/entrepeneurs of all time, but yeah, I think two things are true that he is and that he’s way over his skis in almost every way and has no clear path to fix any of it.
Stop spreading misinformation. Check your facts before you post them.
What an absolutely ridiculous thing to say about an early stage startup, working diligently on creating a valuable new medical technology, with significant publicly visible progress. Especially ridiculous to say on this platform.How can you even write this? "SpaceX turned a profix. Most of it's income is from Starlink".
Yes, that obviously means it's not investor cash, that it's real profit, right? Entirely reasonable view, that. In Europe this is called a "carousel" (named after the old French merry-go-rounds) and it's almost always a form of fraud.
The reason this is often fraud is that they pay each other in fake, but not fake according to accounting rules, money. Lots of things are money "equivalents" in accounting. Loans given out. Shares. Letters of credit. Goodwill. Etc. The way you implement this fraud is that you make SpaceX buy something expensive from Starlink and vice-versa. Then you pay this with anything that is not money (e.g. shares, loan, delays on payments due, ...), that have been freshly printed by the company. Now, by accounting rules, the value of both companies has gone up by (if you do it right) twice the value of the zero-dollar exchange. This is what's going on with companies when their income/revenue is high ... and "somehow" their cashflow is low (both companies publish their income/revenue ... but hide their cashflow statements. "I wonder why")
One of the ways to do this ... which for "some reason" we'll call the Amazon trick is to start 2 companies. Then get cashflow going between them. To illustrate let's buy a bakery. You split the bakery. One company is the store. One company actually bakes the goods to be sold. The relevant part of this is that it's exactly the same as before, except there's now (virtual) cashflow between the two companies. Initially, you buy a pie, the cash is immediately divided up between the store and the bakery. Then you load up the bakery AND the store with debt, by slowly increasing the terms of payment. Settlement-after-15-days. Then 30. Then 60. Then 90. Then 6 months. The key is that the cashflow gets going, and is assumed in accounting to extend into infinity. Now look at what happens. If the s series is what the store makes and p is what it pays to the bakery. Now look at the profits:
Initial monthly profit: s1 - p1, s2 - p2, s3 - p3, ...
Change to settlement at 30 after the first month.
Profit now: s1 - p1, s2, s3 - p2, s4 - p3, ...
So the second months REVENUE goes 100% into your pocket (it's not profit, it's used to buy shares from you, read on). Now change to 60 days. 90 days. 6 months.
Now do the same, but pay in shares of the bakery (while taking out bank loans). If you have cash flow you can do this for at least half a year's revenue (which you get on both sides of the equation if, like Musk, you own both companies, so you get a full year's REVENUE (not profit, revenue) in your pocket, free). And if you now sell the company with the "massive increase in profit" ... AND since the store has signed a contract to pay (and has ideally a long history of paying), it's very easy to get (ideally) investors, but also banks to cover this amount. Who do they buy the shares from? From you! And if you're truly desperate, like Musk, who is buying the shares of the store? The bakery! And who is buying the shares of the bakery? The store! If you look at how this happens, you will realize that it's near impossible for states or banks to stop this, and investors, frankly, don't even try.
And of course, this is totally not what happened with SpaceX and Starlink. Oh, and, obviously, there's reasons that Musk would never ever do this if SpaceX turned a profit (he'd be stealing from himself, essentially). Frauds, all frauds, are dependent on the original investor getting out, or in this case, on Musk selling shares. And, surprise, surprise, Musk has done this kind of split and he is selling shares like mad ...
Tesla is similar. If you take out government subsidies, Tesla is losing money hand over fist. That includes the Federal government buying "cybertrucks", which is such an incredibly bad idea on so many different levels.
It's being destructed anyway. Did you read the article?
I recommend that the sun rise tomorrow
According to the article, it's already slated for splashing down in the pacific in 2030. He's proposing to move the timeline up.
Yes and according to the article, there are still interesting things planned in the meantime. Meanwhile, who would benefit from working on and sending a replacement up?
> interesting things planned in the meantime
The article didn't mention anything interesting. Perhaps they would have if there was going to be actually interesting work?
Perhaps Musk knows what's scheduled to take place and in his opinion its all a waste of time. Just because someone else thinks it is important doesn't mean it does. I think it's fine to have the conversation, especially if it saves money, considering the US is 10's of trillions in debt.
We don't have to speculate ("perhaps"); it was an outburst because his feelings got hurt by an astronaut. It's there for anyone to read because it all happened in public.
That's fine to discuss. That's how things normally happen - someone does the analysis, writes the report, people consider it and maybe implement it. Either way it results in some justification and future accountability.
This tweet is none of that.
> Perhaps Musk knows what's scheduled to take place and in his opinion its all a waste of time.
Musk's opinion on anything is worthless.
So he is going to accelerate the existing $843 million dollar contract for free? If not, that sure sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
Because an astronaut hurt his ego contradicting him.
For reference:
https://bsky.app/profile/josephpolitano.bsky.social/post/3li...
Well the last guy to publicly do that (Thailand caves) got it much worse so either Elon's developing a softer side or astronaut got off easy.
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In Decisivly Optimizing for General Efficiency I'd recommend to resurrect and reinstate project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket) from 1962. 550 tons to LEO launched out of the ocean. No platform necessary, dead simple, and cheap materials, instead of relying on complicated toys from big boys.
And then build some real things up there, not tiny tin cans with foul air.
Like these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_wheel_space_station please?
Not sure if this guy talking about Mars qualifies as news.
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He can go to help it by himself ASAP. Or, at least his Hiccups.
Guy that identifies as vaguely libertarian keeps expressing libertarian opinions. He gathers so much power that it's news whenever it happens. But it has to be little less shocking by now.
In this case it was prompted by an astronaut calling him out on social media about lies he told about the ISS in an interview. Part of his response to was to call for deorbiting the station. It's the precise sort of thing you see from a five year old who's losing at a game or something. "Yeah... well... I'll just not play at all! And we'll not have a game!"
Misleading title :-/ Gotta do better tbh. At least there's a link to the actual (public mind you) tweet, but still.
It's scheduled to be deorbited in 5 years, but Musk thinks it should be done in 2 years... IS DEMOCRACY AT RISK IN AMERICA?!?!
The current administration will attempt to do many dumb things, like any human beings. Crying wolf at every action or opinion diminishes the other side's creditability for when it matters. This is bad for all of us.
He had a toddler's reaction to being fact-checked by an astronaut on Twitter, and because he's him that has policy and spending implications for our government. While he's "just an advisor with no direct power" (to one audience—a court) but "in charge" to another and to all appearances very much is running some important operations.
This shouldn't be ignored, it's one of a thousand things that have happened lately that, very much in living memory, would (any one of them!) have for-sure and for excellent reasons been the end of someone's influence on public life. All of those matter.
That's certainly a point of disagreement. I think this absolutely should be ignored.
Him saying the ISS should be deorbited after 27 years rather than 30 years isn't a disqualifying opinion.
Freaking out at perfectly valid opinions or actions is a bad thing to do. If you are constantly screaming over nothing, you'll be tuned out, and that's bad for when there are real things to scream about.
Leaders of our government (apparently he is one, now) proposing policy changes because they're throwing little-baby tantrums on social media is definitely something worth worrying about.
So we should just a narcissistic baby affect public policy whenever his feefees are hurt?
> will attempt to do many dumb things, like any human beings
Most human beings aren't in charge of the free world and whose decisions have cascading effects on everyone.
And those that are generally tend to be fairly elected and confirmed with a set of checks and balances governing their actions to limit the impact of stupid decisions. Elon Musk is none of those.
Calling the US the free world might be one of the reasons we’re in this mess in the first place
Correct. So a strong counterweight is important to whichever side is in power.
My point with "like any human beings" was to not demonize the current group, and point out that any group of people in power will do stupid things.