Musk is acting like a guy who had a sponsor up high, and then suddenly lost that sponsor. Abruptly.
Out of friends in high places, and out of unlimited government cash, he now is trying to make it work and knows he can’t, since both Spacex and Tesla were set up to never really could.
Spacex has felt like an off-the-books US space launch capability funded by deep state dollars for whatever they were going to use it for.
It explains why NASA got sidelined. NASA was science and on-books stuff mixed with military spacelift missions.
Spacex was private, and quiet.
Tesla? A sort of Solyndra. A funnel and laundromat for various monies.
Tesla doesn’t have any battery IP, or energy management IP. It’s why the entire auto industry is flying past and around them right now.
Musk is acting like a man out in the cold, and knows there are no doors back in. I’d say by November, the ooze from Tesla will spill in earnest and the stock won’t be worth a dollar.
Where have all the Muskovites gone? There usually here by now singing his praises.
For the record NASA has never built its own rockets. They have always subcontracted the work to companies. The Saturn V rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon was built by the following companies:
Boeing
Douglas Aircraft
Rocketdyne
IBM (guidance computers)
And many others
Even today NASA will buy a launch on a ULA Delta or Atlas rocket.
The only difference is that SpaceX is providing the completed rocket instead of subcontracting rocket parts. But NASA has always used tax-payer dollars with private companies.
“Spacex has felt like an off-the-books US space launch capability funded by deep state dollars for whatever they were going to use it for.”
And you know this how, exactly? Oh right, you don’t, like most Freepers you bad mouth a positive product of capitalism that has taken the lunch money from the entity that is actually funded directly by the deep state to simply exist whether they launch a damn thing or not, ULA. SpaceX is dominating the private launch sector because of their innovative reusable boosters, and oh yeah, they’re made in the US too, unlike the Atlas V’s engines.