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Musk Says SpaceX to Decommission Dragon Spacecraft Immediately
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 1y agoThere's approximately zero percent chance of this actually happening.
- ben_w 1y agoI dunno, if Musk chickens out I'd expect Trump to try to punish him by cancelling it anyway. I don't see Trump caring what happens to the ISS, up to and including uncontrolled re-entry.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoShould call his bluff and move to accelerate deorbiting of the ISS. Can always nationalize SpaceX for national security if needed. Musk calls for deorbiting ISS “as soon as possible” - https://spacenews.com/musk-calls-for-deorbiting-iss-as-soon-as-possible/ https://spacenews.com/musk-calls-for-deorbiting-iss-as-soon-... - February 20th, 2025
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 1y agoThey're already selling Dragon flights to private citizens and organizations. They'll keep sending Isaacman up again if he'll pay for it. They might not do the extra stuff NASA wants anymore, but they're currently the only US option to get astronauts to space.
- ben_w 1y ago> They might not do the extra stuff NASA wants anymore, but they're currently the only US option to get astronauts to space. Yes, but does Trump care?
- TheAlchemist 1y agoSpaceX is dead without NASA and government contracts. Starlink is Tesla all over again - projections of profitability going exponential, only to be met with reality some years later.
- ceejayoz 1y agoSpaceX will get nationalized under the Defense Production Act long before it's allowed to die.
- TheAlchemist 1y agoYes 100% agree. Just wanted to point out that this is not a normal commercial relationship. NASA / DOD needs SpaceX (for now) and if Musk thinks he can just stop working with / for them and continue his rocket business as usual, he's getting really delusional.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- VOIPThrowaway2 1y agoThey did it to Iridium when it went bankrupt. DOD basically got it running again with a bunch of money.
- insane_dreamer 1y agodo not underestimate the ego (and resultant stupidity) of either musk or trump
- selivanovp 1y agoYeah, pretty sure that they'll just nationalize SpaceX to prevent it from happening, but not gonna lie, it'd be funny to see how USA government would have to crawl back to Russia for ISS resupply.
- rsynnott 1y agoThey could always ask the ESA to revive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Transfer_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Transfer_Vehicle , but human access might be more of a problem.
- jrs235 1y agoWhen does Trump nationalize SpaceX?
- msgodel 1y agoI bought DXYZ during the dip from all this. I feel the same way.
- sxp 1y agohttps://archive.is/tVeB7 https://archive.is/tVeB7
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- palmotea 1y agoThe obvious next step is to revoke FAA authorization for further Starship tests. Maybe take other steps to prevent "humanity from becoming multi-planetary" and maximally delay any future Mars missions. Does ULA have a reusable rocket? They could probably use some government money to develop one.
- imglorp 1y agoULA does not and will not for ages. Blue Origin has New Glenn which is partly reusable but has only flown once and did not land. Also they have serious organization challenges so they are a very distant second to Spacex. In terms of reuse and also cadence. The best thing that could happen is if Musk left Tesla and SpaceX and let them continue under adult supervision.
- tocs3 1y agoSpaceX might have to stop launching DOD missions. Maybe The administration could deport Musk.
- ortusdux 1y agoBezos and the others must be happy
- andrewinardeer 1y agoI would say they are taking lessons from this childish spat.
- iw7tdb2kqo9 1y agoElon is making both parties enemy. One party is trying to sabotage his car company by destroying cars and another one will destroy rocket company.
- Avshalom 1y ago"one party" isn't trying to do shit about his car company. That's entirely grass roots.
- krick 1y agoIt's not like I didn't call Musk crazy before, but I think now he is truly, really nuts. Like, clinically insane. This isn't about the Dragon, of course, but about the whole thing. Very curious to see how it ends and if he is as untouchable as he clearly thinks he is.
- Yizahi 1y agoDespite my antipathy to Elon, I hope he will take down a peg first a true untouchable Demented Don, who usurped legislative branch and is now eyeing judicial. USA turning autocratic is way scarier than any tehnobro megacorp.
- ben_w 1y agoI can but hope for this fictional reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarndyce_and_Jarndyce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarndyce_and_Jarndyce I'm not sure which of the two is more dangerous. While Trump has the power of a government (and has a terrifying combination of narcissism and incompetence), I believe that if Musk had actually done the $2T cuts he was talking about, this would have ultimately killed around a million or so Americans — the number may seem surprising, I pick it because this scale cannot be reached without cuts to a significant subset of medicare, medicaid, social security, and the military. Here's the graph from 2023, take your pick on how you'd cut $2T and then consider the implications in terms of lives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2023_US_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2023_US_Federal_Budget_In... But again, you get that kind of scale disaster even if such things are done competently, and Musk/DOGE was doing all this stuff with unqualified people fresh from university and no experience is much worse… and unfortunately Trump is fine with unqualified people so long as they're sycophants or fawns.
- Yizahi 1y agoI would argue that 2T$ cut (btw, I completely agree, it would be a disaster) is function of a government. I.e. neither Musk operation as an oligarch, not any other similar guy like Bezos or Tiel etc. can't really do that amount of damage on their own. It was only when Musk was given that power by Trump and instructed to act the way he did, then he could start doing damage. And the whole idea of doing cuts that way came probably not from Musk (or maybe he just had the same views) but from the likes of Bessent and Miran, actual Trump's advisors, planning all this chaos. tl;dr - 2T$ disaster cuts should be attributed to Trump, along with most of the responsibility for the aftermath.
- selivanovp 1y agoIt was obvious from the beginning, that economical miracle of SpaceX is based on government subsidies. Without USA pumping money in every Musk project, his hi-tech businesses are dead.
- ben_w 1y agoSpaceX, subsidies? No. Government contracts? Yes. Tesla subsidies, also yes. SpaceX has actually made space cheap enough for a lot of other stuff to make sense, but without competition the profits are as big as Musk needs for R&D for his hobby of LARPing sci-fi he clearly hasn't read deeply (in this case Red Mars; in the cases of Neuralink and the SpaceX drone ships, The Culture).
- CyberMacGyver 1y agoAny hopes of refunding NASA with the recouped SpaceX subsidies in future?
- ben_w 1y agoWhat subsidies? NASA does not directly subsidise launches as far as I can telk. What NASA does do is contract launch services through competitive tenders. SpaceX only opened this door by arguing they were cheaper, and only kept the door open by then actually delivering, unlike all the other big players in the US. Unfortunately for everyone who likes space stuff but not Musk personally (e.g. me), SpaceX is currently a lot better than everyone else — at least, better than everyone outside China, they're harder to speak of confidently.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- fifilura 1y agoBlack swan: ESA offers to buy (from) SpaceX?