We may recall that during COVID, Musk borrowed money from the Biden administration to keep Tesla from going bankrupt. He was also so committed to his work that he slept in the factory. Today, he sleeps in the Lincoln Bedroom in Trump’s White House instead of the factory floor.
How his life has changed in such a short time. However, his misdirection into politics has left us all wondering about his commitment to his companies and his underlying motivations. Tesla has lost half its value since the election. Musk has lost more money than any human in history over the last few months.
Another bleak topic has not made the headlines but soon will. Like the Tesla EV, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket has been very successful. It has become the mainstay for America’s transportation for placing objects in low earth orbit. It has been reliable and cost-effective due to the reusability of its booster stage. One of the Falcon rockets recently rescued two astronauts stranded by a competitor’s rocket. Common sense says that if SpaceX can create the extremely successful Falcon rocket, it can also create a bigger rocket that can go to Mars. However, there is a simple flaw in our common sense logic. The design of the Falcon rocket is like a bicycle, while the design of the new Starship rocket is like a Maserati.
Musk told the world in 2011 that one of his rockets would place a man on Mars by 2024 or 2025. He bought a significant part of an ecologically sensitive area on the Texas coast and started building and attempting to launch his massive Starship rockets. Most have blown up (or, as SpaceX euphemistically says, “a rapid unscheduled disassembly”) on the launching pad. Thus far, he has made eight launches, and not one has made it into orbit.
The Starship’s deadly flaws are as follows: 1) Not enough thrust, 2) Not safe, and 3) will not receive human space flight certification. Despite the number of rocket nozzles on Starship, the extra weight of the fuel and rocket engines themselves appear to be able to lift about 45 tons of cargo into low earth orbit. Musk’s public goal is 100 tons. After continually tweaking Starship on eight flights, there has been no significant progress in SpaceX overcoming the fact that their design is too fragile for safe human flights. Space flight is never 100% safe. SpaceX’s Falcon has been certified for human space flight. However, the much smaller Falcon rocket generates 72 times less kinetic energy than Starship. After eight Starship failures, there is a minimal chance that the Starship design will ever become certified for human space travel.
Experts are now predicting the imminent failure of the Starship program. Despite the hype and promise, NASA’s Saturn rocket, designed 50 years ago using slide rules instead of computers, is more reliable and cheaper than Musk’s Starship.
The value of any company is based on the anticipation of future profitability. History has shown the surprising and rapid demise of many companies that failed to execute and plan for the future. Tesla’s sales will surely fall this year because automobiles are a consumer product. Since he has recently alienated so many American, European, and Asian consumers, Tesla’s value will continue to fall.
SpaceX is slightly different because its Falcon rocket is still viable for low-earth orbital work. However, if SpaceX devotes lots of resources to a poorly designed Starship, the investors will give up, and there will not be any NASA contracts for trips to the moon or Mars. Musk recently promised the world that he would send an uncrewed Starship to Mars by 2026. As 2026 gets closer, Musk will confidently assert that by 2028, his Starship will go to Mars. His promises have been ringing hollow since he said in 2016 that his first crewed rocket would go to Mars by 2022.
CEO Elon Musk’s aerospace engineering efforts seem to be failing, so what is he doing now? He is engaging in social engineering. Like one of those foreign scammers who try to get money out of lonely widows, Elon is scamming the President of the United States to get money out of all of us for as long as he can. Like the late Howard Hughes, Elon wants a contract or license to create a Spruce Goose. Like this famous goose, the Starship will undoubtedly become a rusting tourist attraction.
Elon Musk has been getting about $8 million daily from US government contracts. As you noted, Tesla was saved from bankruptcy during the Covid pandemic by the Biden administration. He was given a lot of money to build charging stations that work better for Tesla vehicles than other electric vehicles. Musk got Trump to pull the plug on funding for more charging stations not requiring an adapter like the Tesla charging stations do. In fact at many government buildings, non Tesla charging stations already paid for and in place have been ordered to be removed and discarded! Obviously Musk has seemingly had incredible influence over our Moron-In-Chief, but with the latest tariff fiasco resulting in him losing incredible sums of money and he and his brother beginning to show their displeasure, will this relationship continue at the level that it has had since the election?