I love that meme! And yes, its kind of like that. I am actually reasonably familiar with ITAR, including part 121, category 4 (or IV). And Mexico has 'special

I love that meme! And yes, its kind of like that. I am actually reasonably familiar with ITAR, including part 121, category 4 (or IV). And Mexico has 'special trading partner' status under the USMCA (formerly NAFTA) and there are carve outs between the US and Mexico. I recognize the reality of such a move would be complicated, require licensing and review, and have geopolitical consequences that everyone would want to weigh in on. All that said, SpaceX could start that process in earnest (which is to say, announce it, start knocking down the regulatory hurdles) and that would give them tremendous leverage in their discussions with the FAA. It would take a while, it would take persistence, but the longer they pushed for it the closer it would get to reality. It would create a credible alternative (if somewhat longer) path to launch against the push back by the US Gov't agencies. The politics of space flight are complicated, but they are politics. I would think that the people here who watched Uber take on the politics of the cab monopolies, or the EU's politics of privacy reaching in and impacting US companies, would begin to understand that laws and regulation are an expression of the prevailing politics and when the politics change the laws change to support the current point of view. Those examples are clearly not as significant as national security politics but history tells us that even those change. The crypto wars, which I was in the middle of, are a good example of going from "you can't do that" here are the laws, regulations, etc. To "okay fine." To be clear, I don't expect SpaceX to advocate for building a launch facility in Mexico. Their somewhat mercurial "technical guy" with the billions of dollars at his disposal however doesn't seem to shy away from politically difficult strategies if he sees an advantage in them. That makes betting against SpaceX opting to build a launch facility further south not as safe a bet as it would be say for Blue Origin doing something like that.