…or political manifesto?
Musk has a long history of political entanglement — usually with people trying to scuttle his various big-think projects. SpaceX has been a target of regulatory concerns from the get-go, most recently from Texas legislators who opposed letting Musk build an airport for spaceships at a site near Brownsville. Tesla has also clashed with lawmakers in New York and other states who have tried to stop the company from selling electric vehicles directly to consumers. These are the kinds of obstacles no tech CEO wants to face — and yet, because of the scope and scale of Musk’s ambitions, he has to climb over them.
For years, government has been a nuisance to Elon Musk. It’s slowed him down. It’s required him to spend his valuable time lobbying his Twitter followers for support in the New York legislature instead of building rockets. It’s required him to explain his mind-bending technical innovations to grayhairs in Congress as if he were speaking to schoolchildren. Over and over, the public sector has convinced Musk that it is hopelessly lost when it comes to matters of innovation, and that anything truly revolutionary must spring from the ambitions of the private sector.
Yup. NASA is an excellent example of that problem.
Whoever wrote this has offered at least one piece of misinformation. Contrary to opposing the Brownsville space port, the Texas state government has been falling all over itself to give SpaceX every enticement necessary to attract the facility. The only Texas opposition comes from a fringe group of environmentalists.
Just as an addition, the incident that the author of the piece refers to was the objection of a single state senator to a bill that allowed for the closing of a local beach during days when SpaceX would be conducting launches. The opposition was overcome within a few days and the was passed by a huge margin and signed into law.
You could probably meet and talk to ten thousand random Texans before you’d find one opposed to the idea of building a big, expensive spaceport here in Texas. Only Austin-type granola bars would protest such a thing.
I don’t think it is a manifesto as the author at the link says. Musk would be happy with the government doing this program.
Musk’s post the other day simply said this thing is better than high speed rail.
Elon loves big government, just ask him.
I took the Texas jab as typical NY BS. To believe the claim, you would have to know nothing about Grasshopper. W could sit on his front lawn in Crawford and see the Grasshopper tests. That’s only a slight hyperbole as the Grasshopper flights in McGregor were not quite that high, but W’s ranch is a close to the launch site as Titusville to Pad 39A.
You would also have to ignore stories like this:
[Rene] Oliveira [D-Brownsville] recently attended a meeting with staff to discuss creating a fund to promote aerospace businesses picking Texas. He said the state had pledged $3.2 million toward enticing SpaceX. Texas’ economic development arm, contained within the governor’s office, does not comment on its negotiations.