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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 3: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.

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Speaker 2: We're very excited about this recording. It's a crossover episode

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Speaker 2: with Bloomberg's weekly Elon Inc. Podcasts, So we're all about

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Speaker 2: Elon today. And to get into that, Tracy, do you

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Speaker 2: remember our interview with the Ukraine post CEO.

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Speaker 4: Yes, I do, Igor Smolensky. That was a really interesting

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Speaker 4: episode for a variety of reasons. One because I just

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Speaker 4: really enjoy talking about logistics. But secondly, one of the

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Speaker 4: things that stood out to both of us, I think

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Speaker 4: from that conversation was when he was talking about how

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Speaker 4: they're using Starlink in Ukraine and also the idea that,

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Speaker 4: you know, if they were ever to he designed the

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Speaker 4: postal service from scratch, they would avoid traditional Internet and

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Speaker 4: just use all starlink.

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Speaker 2: No, that was like a very eye opening moment for me,

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Speaker 2: and I feel like when it comes to Elon Musk

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Speaker 2: obviously it feels like, I don't know, forty percent of

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Speaker 2: the attention on him is related to Tesla, another forty

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Speaker 2: precent is Twitter or x and then we're aware that

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Speaker 2: there's like a bunch of all these other companies like

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Speaker 2: Neuralink and Grock and SpaceX. But SpaceX and Starlink. That's

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Speaker 2: a huge deal because my understanding or my sense is

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Speaker 2: that like he is just dominating the skies.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's kind of the cool business as well. Right,

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Speaker 4: it's really cools like rockets that.

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Speaker 3: Can be reused.

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Speaker 4: If you ever see the satellites launching into the sky,

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Speaker 4: the Starlink ones, they're really beautiful. Satellite internet is really

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Speaker 4: interesting to me, partly because of when I was in

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Speaker 4: Hong Kong. Yeah, and you know, they had the really

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Speaker 4: strict COVID rules and they would basically send you to

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Speaker 4: a government facility that was extremely limited. If you came

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Speaker 4: down with COVID, you had to have satellite internet in

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Speaker 4: there because there was no government internet. So you had

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Speaker 4: to get a little box and bring it with you

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Speaker 4: if you were spending like three or.

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Speaker 5: Four you get it. Wait, you didn't. You never had

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Speaker 5: to go.

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Speaker 4: I didn't.

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Speaker 3: I know a lot of people who did.

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Speaker 5: And they had to bring their own box.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, because otherwise there was either no internet or it

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Speaker 4: was so poor.

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Speaker 3: The effectively there was no internet.

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Speaker 2: I had not realized that element, but it is pretty wild. Like, Okay,

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Speaker 2: here's one company and it just totally dominates satellite communication.

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Speaker 2: I know, it dominates rocket launches. And historically space was

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Speaker 2: the domain of governments, right, space was the domain of

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Speaker 2: the military of any government, and or NASA or the

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Speaker 2: NASA equivalent. And now we're in this world where there's

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Speaker 2: one individual and basically one company that is just completely

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Speaker 2: dominating space. And like I said, you know, I think

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Speaker 2: people talk about Tesla and they talk about Twitter, but

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Speaker 2: I feel like SpaceX deserves more attention and I want

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Speaker 2: to learn more about SpaceX.

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Speaker 6: No.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely, this is something I hadn't really i guess, internalized

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Speaker 4: until recently. But the degree to which NASA basically opened

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Speaker 4: up space to private companies is kind of remarkable compared

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Speaker 4: to the way it was in the past. So absolutely,

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Speaker 4: I think this is something we should talk about.

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Speaker 5: Right.

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Speaker 2: So, we've wanted to do a space slash SpaceX slash

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Speaker 2: Starlink episode for a while to like really understand this

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Speaker 2: company and how it fits into the broader elon Musk Empire.

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Speaker 2: So I'm very excited to say today we have a

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Speaker 2: bunch of perfect guests. They are all are colleagues at Bloomberg.

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Speaker 2: But first up we're going to be speaking with Ashley Vance,

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Speaker 2: who reports on all kinds of cool tech stuff for

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Speaker 2: us here at Bloomberg, sort of like the future cutting

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Speaker 2: edge pieces. Every time Ashley writes an article, it's just

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Speaker 2: about some crazy, mad scientist, usually out in the Bay

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Speaker 2: Area doing anything wild. He's written a biography of Elon Musk,

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Speaker 2: and his more recent book is called When the Heavens

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Speaker 2: Went On Sale The Misfits and Geniuses racing to put

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Speaker 2: Space within reach. So the perfect guest to talk space. So,

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Speaker 2: Ashley Vance, thank you so much for coming on.

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Speaker 7: O Locked, thank you for having me.

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Speaker 2: I'm aware that SpaceX exists, that it's in the business

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Speaker 2: of private rockets and satellites and all that stuff, But like,

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Speaker 2: how big is SpaceX, or maybe how far ahead is

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Speaker 2: SpaceX versus the competition?

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Speaker 7: Well, yeah, quite far, you know. I always think of

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Speaker 7: this as one of the most unlikely business stories there is.

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Speaker 7: SpaceX started roughly twenty years ago. Nobody, you know, had

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Speaker 7: really proven anything out as far as being a commercial

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Speaker 7: rocket company or satellite company in a meaningful way. Before

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Speaker 7: it was all governments that a handful of governments that

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Speaker 7: dominated this business. And if you fast forward now twenty

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Speaker 7: years later, SpaceX. Last year, for example, they put up

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Speaker 7: about fifty percent of the world's rockets and probably close

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Speaker 7: to around eighty percent of the world satellites. So that's

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Speaker 7: SpaceX versus the entire world. That's SpaceX versus China, Russia, India,

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Speaker 7: et cetera. And if you look at this year so far,

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Speaker 7: they've put up about ninety percent of the amount of

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Speaker 7: stuff that's gone into space this year has been put

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Speaker 7: up by SpaceX. So they basically revived the United States

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Speaker 7: space program. We'd fallen behind a number of countries that

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Speaker 7: looked like China was going to take this thing over,

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Speaker 7: and now SpaceX is the clear winner of the space

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Speaker 7: economy so far.

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Speaker 4: I have a embarrassing question, but what's the difference between

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Speaker 4: SpaceX and Starlink.

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Speaker 5: Oh that's a good one.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, well, okay, so there's different pieces here. Traditionally, most

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Speaker 7: companies you've sort of divided either you were a rocket

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Speaker 7: company or you were a satellite company. SpaceX has become

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Speaker 7: the dominant player in both, and Starlink fits into that picture.

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Speaker 7: So Starlink is a satellite communications service. SpaceX puts up

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Speaker 7: thousands of satellites around the Earth. They're always surrounding the Earth.

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Speaker 7: They're beaming down high speed Internet, and so it's really

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Speaker 7: designed for places where like half the world today cannot

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Speaker 7: be reached by fiber optic cables because it's too hard

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Speaker 7: or expensive to put them in the ground. So that's

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Speaker 7: a lot of people. That's four billion people that cannot

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Speaker 7: get high speed internet today. And if you buy a

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Speaker 7: SpaceX antenna, it's like a little basketball sized thing and

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Speaker 7: you stick it at your house. You then pull down

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Speaker 7: this high speed Internet delivered from space. And so SpaceX

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Speaker 7: is dominant in rockets that it is really dominant in satellites.

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Speaker 7: If I could give you one more data point, just

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Speaker 7: to like put this in perspective. So from like nineteen

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Speaker 7: fifty until about twenty twenty, all of the world we

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Speaker 7: had two thousand, five hundred satellites surrounding the Earth. That's

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Speaker 7: what we've done in all those decades, from twenty twenty

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Speaker 7: to today, that we've gone from two thousand, five hundred

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Speaker 7: satellites to about twelve thousand surrounding the Earth, and the

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Speaker 7: vast majority of those now are SpaceX satellites. That's why

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Speaker 7: there's that huge jump.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 4: I feel like it dominates the nights guy amateur like

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Speaker 4: photography community as well. Do you ever see that online?

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Speaker 4: People talking about, like, what's this light in the sky?

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Speaker 4: I can't figure it out? And the answer is always Starlink.

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Speaker 4: It's always Starlink launching new things.

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Speaker 7: Well, I mean it's funny. So you know when they

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Speaker 7: do a Starlink launch, each rocket is filled with dozens

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Speaker 7: and dozens of satellites. Said, yeah, it's just cool phenomenon.

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Speaker 7: I mean, when they first come out of the rocket,

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Speaker 7: they're all kind of clumped together, and then over the

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Speaker 7: course of weeks they sort of slowly spread out, and

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Speaker 7: so now you can see that in the night sky.

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Speaker 7: It used to be a pretty rare thing, but over

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Speaker 7: the last two three years, people see this now all

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Speaker 7: the time.

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Speaker 2: So I used to do a little bit of on

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Speaker 2: air reporting for Bloomberg Rocketry, like when they would fire

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Speaker 2: up some of those SpaceX trials and then the rocket

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Speaker 2: would go up and then come down, and like, I'm

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Speaker 2: still pretty blown away when I see those relandings, Like

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Speaker 2: it still doesn't seem like that should be physically possible.

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Speaker 2: I know there are other competitors. You wrote a whole

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Speaker 2: book about them. Jeff Bezos has won. Some of the

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Speaker 2: people who used to work for SpaceX have launched their

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Speaker 2: own sitting aside the Nu Miracle gap. What is this

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Speaker 2: sort of technological gap right now between SpaceX and how

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Speaker 2: good it is with its reusable rockets and so forth,

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Speaker 2: and where the competition is technologically.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean that's pretty dramatic too. So there used

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Speaker 7: to be there was a handful of government programs that

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Speaker 7: dominated space since the space race began. And none of

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Speaker 7: the government players do reusable rockets at all. So nothing

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Speaker 7: from Europe, nothing from Russia, India, Japan, any of that,

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Speaker 7: And so you have to kind of turn to the

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Speaker 7: commercial players that have popped up over the last ten

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Speaker 7: fifteen years. And so SpaceX has this dialed in as

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Speaker 7: we all know. You know, they've reused one rocket I

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Speaker 7: think as many as twenty times. And I wrote a

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Speaker 7: biography on Elon you know, that came out a few

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Speaker 7: years ago. When I was researching that book, all the

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Speaker 7: traditional players said this was going to be impossible and

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Speaker 7: it was wasted time and the math would never pencil out.

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Speaker 7: But clearly it has. After SpaceX, the second most successful

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Speaker 7: rocket company is Rocket Lab. It was started in New Zealand.

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Speaker 7: It's headquartered now in the United States. So SpaceX has

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Speaker 7: flown hundreds and hundreds of rockets. Rocket Labs flown about fifty.

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Speaker 7: And they have a much smaller, cheaper rocket, and they

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Speaker 7: have started to move towards parts of reasonable rocket and

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Speaker 7: they are building now a larger, fully reusable rocket that

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Speaker 7: they're hoping to fly next year. So they really are

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Speaker 7: the only current real rocket competitor to SpaceX, and they're

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Speaker 7: doing very well. They're starting to launch once every couple

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Speaker 7: of weeks.

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Speaker 8: You know.

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Speaker 7: The next step is the sort of last great hope

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Speaker 7: to really challenge SpaceX is Blue Origin, which has been

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Speaker 7: sort of like a sad tale for it was started

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Speaker 7: almost the same year as SpaceX and really hasn't done

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Speaker 7: that much. They do have a reasonable rocket for the

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Speaker 7: tourism flights where you go to space for about six minutes.

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Speaker 7: Blue Origin has never sent a satellite up. It's just

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Speaker 7: not been involved in sort of the commercial end of

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Speaker 7: the business. This year they think will be the first

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Speaker 7: time they send up their much larger rocket that can

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Speaker 7: take satellites. And Blue Origin is also focused on reusable rockets.

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Speaker 4: Wait, I have another basic question, which is, how do

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Speaker 4: reusable rockets actually work? And why did SpaceX decide to

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Speaker 4: go down that route, because, as you said, a lot

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Speaker 4: of people thought it was mathematically or physically impossible.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, there's this thought that there was sort

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Speaker 7: of a waste of time because the rockets, they go

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Speaker 7: through so much damage and pressure and violence during a

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Speaker 7: rocket launch that the idea of bringing this huge tube

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Speaker 7: back and it's still being usable again that seemed a

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Speaker 7: bit far fetched. And you have to deal with the

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Speaker 7: whole process of actually getting that too back instead of

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Speaker 7: falling into the ocean or burning up in the atmosphere.

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Speaker 7: And so SpaceX, you know, they developed this technique where

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Speaker 7: they have these landing legs actually on the big base

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Speaker 7: part of the rocket, and it comes back towards Earth

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Speaker 7: and it's sort of free falling, and then all of

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Speaker 7: a sudden, the engines kick back on again and they

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Speaker 7: slow it down and it just lands right back on

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Speaker 7: the pad where it took off from. There's a big

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Speaker 7: trade off in this, so the physics nobody has a

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Speaker 7: great advantage on the physics of rockets, and the physics

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Speaker 7: of rockets aren't that great When you have this giant

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Speaker 7: tube full of fuel. You know, it's a few percent

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Speaker 7: of the total weight of that rocket is the stuff

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Speaker 7: that you actually get to take to space. The vast

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Speaker 7: majority of it is fuel, and you have to use

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Speaker 7: some of your fuel to land the rocket. And so

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Speaker 7: people also thought that was a bad trade off to make.

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Speaker 7: It's better just to take more stuff.

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Speaker 2: Didn't At one point, some people thought that rockets themselves

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Speaker 2: would be inherently impossible for that exact reason that just

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Speaker 2: like so much.

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Speaker 5: Of the weight would be the fuel.

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Speaker 2: And so some people just theorized that the idea of

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Speaker 2: rocket true would be inherently impossible.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, going way back, you know, the first rocket pioneers

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Speaker 7: were sort of like in the nineteen tens and twenties,

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Speaker 7: This guy Robert Goddard was the American pioneer in this field,

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Speaker 7: and he there's a pretty famous moment where he writes

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Speaker 7: an op ed for the New York Times talking about

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Speaker 7: flying a rocket to the moon, and he was just

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Speaker 7: pilloried as this wacko, you know, and that none of

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Speaker 7: this would ever happened and the physics don't make sense

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Speaker 7: at all, And so it took a while to sort

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Speaker 7: of get people to believe that these days, the way

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Speaker 7: it basically works is like the bigger you can make

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Speaker 7: a rocket, you start to get these advantages, and so

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Speaker 7: that's kind of what you want to do. But the

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Speaker 7: bigger you make a rocket, the more complicated it is,

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Speaker 7: the more engines it needs, it gets harder and harder.

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Speaker 7: And SpaceX is really the only one that has dialed

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Speaker 7: all this in, has the manufacturing processes to make all

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Speaker 7: this this math work. If you look at the government programs,

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Speaker 7: they don't really have an answer to what SpaceX is doing.

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Speaker 7: And these things take ten twenty thirty years to figure out.

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Speaker 4: How did we end up with a system where we

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Speaker 4: have you know, the government has a space program, NASA exists,

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Speaker 4: and then we have these private companies who are doing

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Speaker 4: or providing very important services for entities like NASA. It

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Speaker 4: seems like a weird kind of pseudo government private commercial

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Speaker 4: system that we ended up in.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, if I could riff for a second,

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Speaker 7: I've thought about this a lot. You know, there's an

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Speaker 7: economist named Alex McDonald. He works for NASA. He wrote

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Speaker 7: a really interesting book kind of on this topic. You know,

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Speaker 7: we were talking about these rocket pioneers in the nineteen

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Speaker 7: tens and twenties, the US had Robert Goddard. There was

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Speaker 7: a similar figure in Germany and Russia, and they were

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Speaker 7: all pursuing these kind of liquid fueled rockets, very similar

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Speaker 7: to what we use today. They were essentially startups. These

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Speaker 7: were researchers who got private money. Back in the day,

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Speaker 7: if you were really rich, the cool thing to do

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Speaker 7: was to build a giant telescope. That that's what like

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Speaker 7: rich guys used to used to put their money towards philanthropically,

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Speaker 7: and they started to do that to rockets. It was

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Speaker 7: kind of like everyone was interested in space and wanted

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Speaker 7: to prove this out, and so it looked like we

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Speaker 7: were kind of heading on this commercial path. I think

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Speaker 7: World War two spilling into the Cold War, where space

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Speaker 7: turned into this national sort of achievement, this point of pride,

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Speaker 7: this way to show your scientific prowess, you know, it

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Speaker 7: turned into a government effort. And the result of that

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Speaker 7: was that the rockets could not fail. We got on

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Speaker 7: this race obviously to send humans into space, and so

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Speaker 7: you have to build very expensive, infallible rockets, and this

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Speaker 7: is it was sort of like history that pushed us there.

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Speaker 7: But then we got stuck, you know, literally, rockets really

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Speaker 7: did not change from the nineteen sixties until SpaceX came along,

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Speaker 7: and so everybody got fixated that these rockets had to

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Speaker 7: be huge, costly expensive. They couldn't fail, it was embarrassing

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Speaker 7: if they did, and that was the ethos. And so

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Speaker 7: SpaceX came along. They were able to take more risk,

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Speaker 7: to make the rockets cheaper, to use modern technology, modern software,

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Speaker 7: and so they changed that equation. And it's only now

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Speaker 7: that we're in this weird world between government and commercial space.

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Speaker 7: I think, you know, we are leaving that era of

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Speaker 7: government space. I wrote my hope my new book was

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Speaker 7: called When the Heavens Went on Sale, because I think

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Speaker 7: this is completely becoming a commercial enterprise now.

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Speaker 2: It's still fascinating, this sort of like path dependency and

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Speaker 2: right like the sort of military over engineered.

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Speaker 5: It's about carrying people.

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Speaker 2: It's about that triumphalism and then the idea that okay,

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Speaker 2: that's what people think a rocket is. And then SpaceX

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Speaker 2: comes along and just rethinks it from the ground up

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Speaker 2: and sounds like I'm curious about the business. So, you know,

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Speaker 2: Tracy and I had a conversation on on Lots several

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Speaker 2: months ago, and we were actually talking to the guy

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Speaker 2: who runs Ukrainian postal service, and he was talking about how,

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Speaker 2: you know, thanks to Starlink specifically, if Ukrainie were able

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Speaker 2: to retake a village, they wouldn't rebuild the old internet infrastructure.

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Speaker 2: They could get Internet going in a day with satellite.

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Speaker 2: And it's sort of like very jarring because you realize,

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Speaker 2: you know, just what an incredible asset Elon is building up,

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Speaker 2: and so between SpaceX and starlink, I you know, I

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Speaker 2: know that like SpaceX will charge you or an individual

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Speaker 2: if you want to like get some space on one

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Speaker 2: of his rockets to fire up your own satellite. Obviously

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Speaker 2: Starlink subscribers pay I guess presumably some monthly fee. But

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Speaker 2: you know, where's this going in terms of the monetization

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Speaker 2: and business to have both the launching infrastructure and the

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Speaker 2: satellite infrastructure together, and what can be done with so

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Speaker 2: much physical material out in space owned by one company.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I mean this has been SpaceX's huge advantage.

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Speaker 7: It has rivals trying to build this space internet. There's

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Speaker 7: one web which started as a sort of quasi US

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Speaker 7: and European venture. It's gone through bankruptcy in many twist

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Speaker 7: and turns, but It has tons of satellites, but it

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Speaker 7: lacks rockets, and it was actually hoping to fly on

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Speaker 7: a ton of Russian rockets. And when the Ukrainian War

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Speaker 7: broke out, they don't have access to these Russian rockets anymore,

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Speaker 7: and so they got sort of stock and SpaceX was

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Speaker 7: able to race ahead. Amazon is looking to build a

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Speaker 7: giant constellation. Jeff clearly has a rocket company, but he

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Speaker 7: doesn't have the rockets right now that can can send

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Speaker 7: all these satellites up. And so SpaceX is in this

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Speaker 7: unique position. There's trade offs, right. You can think of starlink.

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Speaker 7: I think of it as a it's really like the

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Speaker 7: first global Internet slash communications provider. As we all know,

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Speaker 7: telecoms tends to be a sort of nationalized thing. If

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Speaker 7: you're in the US, you're on whatever AT and T

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Speaker 7: or Verizon. When you go to Europe you have to

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Speaker 7: switch to something else.

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Speaker 6: You know.

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Speaker 7: Being in space you get past all of that, and

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Speaker 7: so you become this global force. And that is how

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Speaker 7: they make their money is on these monthly subscriptions. I

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Speaker 7: have Starlink at a house in Mexico. I think it's

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Speaker 7: about sixty or seventy dollars a month. To get the service,

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Speaker 7: and so you've got consumers paying for that, You've got

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Speaker 7: some businesses paying for that, and yeah, so there's this

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Speaker 7: idea maybe you could avoid building a lot of infrastructure

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Speaker 7: on the ground. There is a trade off, Like space

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Speaker 7: Internet is almost definitely never going to be as fast

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Speaker 7: as fiber, and so if you're you know, if you're

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Speaker 7: in a country like the United States where we have

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Speaker 7: this huge land mass and we have the money to

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Speaker 7: lay all this fiber, you know, that is still going

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Speaker 7: to be in the backbone that most people use. But

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Speaker 7: in all these other circumstances, planes, cars, boats, also like

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Speaker 7: this idea. This is what I think about the most,

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Speaker 7: is this unified fabric of the Internet blanketing the earth,

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Speaker 7: so that no matter where you are, there's internet service.

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Speaker 7: All of our modern devices are working, things like autonomous

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Speaker 7: cars and drones and all this stuff that need to

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Speaker 7: be connected all the time. You know, I think SpaceX

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Speaker 7: right now is in the pole position to be that

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Speaker 7: sort of future backbone of all that.

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Speaker 4: You said something interesting earlier, you said, our last hope

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Speaker 4: for competition to SpaceX was Blue Origin, And.

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Speaker 7: That might have been dramatic, but they are the biggest

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Speaker 7: of just because Jeff has so much money.

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Speaker 3: To actually right well point taken.

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Speaker 4: But I do get the sense that there is a

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Speaker 4: desire to have more than one company that's doing this.

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Speaker 4: And I guess my question is why is that important?

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Speaker 4: Because when I think of natural monopolies, like, it's usually

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Speaker 4: something pretty important like infrastructure or rockets. In this case,

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Speaker 4: couldn't we have a world where one company is very

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Speaker 4: very good at building these and dominates like, what's the

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Speaker 4: trade off here?

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Speaker 7: Well, we do have a world like that at the moment,

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Speaker 7: and you know, we've already seen some I think there's

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Speaker 7: a bunch of reasons you would want multiple rocket companies,

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Speaker 7: particularly if you're the United States or China or Russia.

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Speaker 7: Clearly for political, military, strategic reasons. You don't want to

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Speaker 7: be dependent on one company for all kinds of reasons.

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Speaker 7: Something could go wrong, their rocket could stop working, they

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Speaker 7: could go out of business. You know, you want these

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Speaker 7: other paths to space. We've talked about how many satellites

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Speaker 7: are going up. I mean, this is the next I

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Speaker 7: think of it as them. You know, we spent the

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Speaker 7: last thirty years building out this internet infrastructure on Earth.

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Speaker 7: We are now doing the exact same thing in space.

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Speaker 7: It is going to be the next spot where we

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Speaker 7: build out our computing infrastructure, and you want lots of

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Speaker 7: access to that and ways to put these satellites up

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Speaker 7: replace them. And look, if we look at Ukraine, there's

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Speaker 7: a pretty good case you could make that Ukraine would

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Speaker 7: have fallen too Russia quite quickly without SpaceX. In the

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Speaker 7: early days of the war, all of theseites were providing

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Speaker 7: tons of imagery that aided the Ukrainian military. After that

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Speaker 7: SpaceX Starlink became this essential part of the Ukrainian military's infrastructure.

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Speaker 7: It really undermined Russia's plans for attack. But you know,

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Speaker 7: we saw these situations where Elon can turn Starlink on

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Speaker 7: and off at his whims And so, you know, do

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Speaker 7: you want one person with the power of a nation

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Speaker 7: state when things like this happen, And do you want

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Speaker 7: that one person to be someone as material as Elon?

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Speaker 7: Probably not. You probably want a couple options in this race.

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Speaker 7: And definitely nations like China, Europe, Russia are going to

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Speaker 7: want their own space, Internet and rockets.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I imagine that pricing is pretty low down on

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Speaker 4: the priority list when it comes to rockets. But Joe,

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Speaker 4: weren't you looking at the cross for.

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Speaker 3: Some of these.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it was fun.

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Speaker 2: I looked and see what the cost of putting a

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Speaker 2: satellite into space, and I was pretty annoyed because I

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Speaker 2: thought I could get a fifty kilogram satellite into space

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Speaker 2: for six hundred and ninety thousand dollars.

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Speaker 5: But then I clicked to the next page and there were.

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Speaker 2: Tall there's like fuel surch charge and all this stuff

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Speaker 2: junk went up to like one point five million. So

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Speaker 2: I was like, I was not happy. I felt like

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Speaker 2: an Airbnb person.

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Speaker 7: That's still pretty good, though. You know, if you go back,

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Speaker 7: you go back a few if you go back a

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Speaker 7: few years, you're you basically have to pay three hundred

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Speaker 7: million dollars. I'm buying an entire rocket and.

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Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'll book the one point five million.

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Speaker 5: Wait.

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Speaker 7: So prices happened coming down like dramatically, So there's there's

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Speaker 7: a couple of ways prices have gone down. So SpaceX's

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Speaker 7: major competitor in the United States is this company called

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Speaker 7: United Launch Alliance. It's a combination of Boeing and Lockheed,

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Speaker 7: and they're going rate for rocket launch is usually about

435
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Speaker 7: three hundred million dollars. That's for the entire rocket. SpaceX

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Speaker 7: charges about sixty million dollars for the equivalent rocket, So

437
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:52,000
Speaker 7: already SpaceX pulled the price down. And then there's a

438
00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 7: new model that's emerged where you don't have to buy

439
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:58,159
Speaker 7: the entire rockets because the satellites used to all be

440
00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 7: the size of a school bus and cost billions of

441
00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:02,760
Speaker 7: dollars and you wanted your own rocket. Now there's tiny

442
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:04,760
Speaker 7: satellites like the size of a shoe box, and so

443
00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:07,760
Speaker 7: you buy space on a SpaceX rocket.

444
00:23:07,800 --> 00:23:09,679
Speaker 5: I think that's what I was looking at. I was

445
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 5: looking at that.

446
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:13,640
Speaker 2: They called it like the ride share program, right, yeah,

447
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:15,160
Speaker 2: the SpaceX ride shair.

448
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:17,400
Speaker 7: Well, just one last thing on the price, and then

449
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:20,359
Speaker 7: you know there are tons now of these small rocket

450
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:23,159
Speaker 7: companies that have merged. So like with rocket Lab, you

451
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:25,600
Speaker 7: don't get the giant rocket of SpaceX, but you can

452
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 7: get an entire rocket for about eight million dollars. Whatever

453
00:23:29,560 --> 00:23:30,240
Speaker 7: you like to space.

454
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:31,000
Speaker 5: So it's it's part.

455
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:33,800
Speaker 7: This is what has opened up the opportunity for all

456
00:23:33,800 --> 00:23:35,120
Speaker 7: these satellite startups.

457
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:38,760
Speaker 2: We gotta check the CPI index for satellite rocket and

458
00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:42,440
Speaker 2: see the disinflation happening there. I just have one last question,

459
00:23:42,520 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 2: and you already did sort of hit on it, but

460
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 2: the national security element and I'm curious about it both

461
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 2: in the US and maybe China and Europe, Like, it

462
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:54,119
Speaker 2: is pretty wild that, you know, in a war, a

463
00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:58,919
Speaker 2: lot may depend on the whims of one individual Elon

464
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 2: Musk and we you know, it's his company. He can

465
00:24:02,320 --> 00:24:04,520
Speaker 2: do whatever he wants in theory, et cetera. But like,

466
00:24:04,800 --> 00:24:08,880
Speaker 2: how are governments around the world thinking about the key

467
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 2: man risk of the geopolitical risk and this is it

468
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 2: is an American company, and et cetera, and the sort

469
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 2: of you know, the potential for yeah, the fact that

470
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 2: if he wants to turn it off for one country

471
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 2: and not for another country, he can really impair change

472
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:24,480
Speaker 2: the course of a war.

473
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:25,840
Speaker 5: Like, how are they thinking about this risk?

474
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:28,479
Speaker 7: Well, in the United States, I mean, we do have

475
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:31,240
Speaker 7: backup plans, you know, there is United Launch Alliance is

476
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:33,640
Speaker 7: always there with a rocket. They just they haven't been

477
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 7: able to do things like send humans to space. SpaceX

478
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:38,480
Speaker 7: has been the only one they can send humans to

479
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:41,199
Speaker 7: space since the Shuttle stopped. But the US has been

480
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:44,399
Speaker 7: funding all these startups. Rocket Lab got some military funding.

481
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 7: There's tons of these small rocket companies that have received

482
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 7: funding from DARPA, et cetera. And so so they're trying

483
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:52,480
Speaker 7: to put all these backup plans in place. China has

484
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 7: a weird mix of government backed and private rocket companies.

485
00:24:56,920 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 7: If you look elsewhere, the list gets much smaller. It's

486
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 7: usually one government program and maybe a rocket startup. And

487
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 7: so this is like a very expensive, hard to do thing.

488
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:09,920
Speaker 7: The US was in a pretty bad spot twenty years ago.

489
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:12,959
Speaker 7: The government programs had slowed down. The US is an

490
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 7: amazing spot now we have more rocket startups and satellite

491
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 7: startups than anywhere on Earth by many, many times. Russia's

492
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:23,159
Speaker 7: space program is cratering. I think people should pay attention

493
00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 7: to this. SpaceX had already undermined their entire business. The

494
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:30,200
Speaker 7: war in Ukraine has cut off a lot of customers.

495
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:32,720
Speaker 7: They are the wild card in all this space is

496
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:36,400
Speaker 7: a point of national pride going back many decades. Corruption

497
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 7: plus their declining business has eroded their space program. They've

498
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 7: already done things like sent a missile up from the

499
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 7: Earth to destroy one of their own satellites, just to

500
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 7: remind everybody that they have this capability. And so you know,

501
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 7: you'll also notice that the Space Force formed over the

502
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:57,359
Speaker 7: last few years, and so so this is how people

503
00:25:57,440 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 7: are thinking about this. Space is going to be an

504
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:02,800
Speaker 7: air are of military combat almost definitely.

505
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 2: Ashley Vance, that was so fantastic, so great to have

506
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 2: you on Odd Lots and I feel like I know a.

507
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 7: Little bit more now, Thanks thanks for having.

508
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:29,200
Speaker 2: That was our conversation with Ashley Vance. And now we're

509
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:32,400
Speaker 2: going to turn to two other of our Bloomberg colleagues,

510
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 2: two of the hosts of the excellent Elon Inc. Podcast,

511
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 2: which covers the sort of weekly or daily goings on

512
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 2: of Elon Musk and his universe. They're going to help

513
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 2: us understand how SpaceX and Starlink fit more directly into

514
00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:50,200
Speaker 2: the broader Elon Musk empire. We're going to be speaking

515
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:53,640
Speaker 2: with Dana Hall and Max Chafkins. So, Dana and Max,

516
00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:56,400
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. So Dana,

517
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 2: I'll start with you, like, how would you describe that

518
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 2: specific role in the various assets that Elon has? What

519
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 2: is SpaceX and I guess Starlink, Like, what does it

520
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 2: serve together?

521
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:08,439
Speaker 6: Well, I guess I would say first and foremost that

522
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 6: SpaceX is Elon's first love. I mean, this is the

523
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 6: company that Elon founded after he made his millions from PayPal,

524
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:19,439
Speaker 6: and it's really the company that he began first and

525
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 6: foremost before anything else. I mean, I feel like in

526
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:25,199
Speaker 6: the public perception he's known as the CEO of Tesla

527
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 6: because Tesla is publicly traded and it makes a consumer

528
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 6: facing product. But Tesla's the company that Musk invested in

529
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 6: early on and then took over. But SpaceX is really

530
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,480
Speaker 6: the company that he founded, and it's really his first love.

531
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 6: I Mean, this guy's whole thing is about going to Mars,

532
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 6: and all the other aspects of his company are really

533
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 6: sort of building towards that, like a penultimate goal that

534
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,000
Speaker 6: has been his goal for like decades now.

535
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 8: Just from a like logistic standpoint. Also picking up what

536
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 8: Dana saying, like Elon Musk has long lived very close

537
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:58,400
Speaker 8: to SpaceX, like it's been where he sort of located

538
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 8: his person and then he's flown, you know, a couple

539
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 8: of days out of the week to Tesla and sort

540
00:28:02,600 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 8: of manage that as like a side gig. And the

541
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 8: other thing that Dana didn't mention this is probably pretty important,

542
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:11,160
Speaker 8: is it's not just his first love, it's also kind

543
00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 8: of key to his brand and like the way that

544
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 8: he's managed to sort of create a lot of momentum

545
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 8: in other businesses. I think draws at least to some

546
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 8: extent from the success he's had at SpaceX.

547
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 4: Yes, everyone knows that Tesla's are in fact just earth rockets.

548
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 3: That was terrible, Max.

549
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:30,160
Speaker 4: I was gonna ask you you mentioned you mentioned time

550
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:31,120
Speaker 4: management there.

551
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:33,119
Speaker 3: This was going to be my next question.

552
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:35,880
Speaker 4: But when I think about Elon's empire, I can't even

553
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 4: remember everything he has now. But obviously there's Tesla, there's SpaceX,

554
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 4: there's the boring company, is that it? And like Neuralinkrock

555
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 4: grock x X AI, Yeah, Twitter, Where where does he

556
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 4: find time to tweet?

557
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:51,000
Speaker 3: That's the important thing.

558
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 8: I mean, I think if you talk to shareholders Tesla,

559
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 8: and even in some of Elon Musk's friends, I think

560
00:28:57,440 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 8: would say, you know, he's spending too much time tweeting.

561
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 8: And I do think that one of the things that's

562
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 8: been so difficult about this X acquisition, the acquisition of Twitter,

563
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 8: renaming it X, and then Elon Musk's like increased engagement

564
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:14,440
Speaker 8: on X has been that it has like taken him

565
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 8: away from these companies that are potentially more lucrative, more valuable,

566
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 8: and also like more ultimately probably more important in sort

567
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 8: of achieving the goals as Elon Musk has laid them out.

568
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 6: Dan, Yeah, I was gonna say, I think he tweets

569
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 6: a lot when he is on a plane or on

570
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:32,320
Speaker 6: the toilet. Frankly, I mean I think he's even said

571
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:34,600
Speaker 6: as much, and he tweets a lot, and he doesn't

572
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 6: sleep very much, so you know he's when he's in

573
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 6: between meetings or even if he's in a meeting. I

574
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 6: think he's just sort of glued to that phone NonStop.

575
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 2: I can't relate, Like Tracy immediately turns her head to

576
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 2: me when you said that, but I can't relate to that.

577
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 5: So keep going you.

578
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 3: And would have a lot to talk about, I feel like,

579
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 3: or it.

580
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 2: Would just be distracted the entire time and not have

581
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 2: it a lot to talk about.

582
00:29:56,760 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 3: Okay, right, here's the serious question.

583
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 4: Are there synergies between a company like SpaceX and say

584
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 4: a Tesla or a boring company or neuralink or something

585
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 4: like that.

586
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 8: I mean Elon Musk would say yeah, absolutely. I mean,

587
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 8: first of all, like the general thing that he did

588
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 8: with SpaceX, like if you go back to the beginning,

589
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 8: is sort of take essentially like pre existing technology that

590
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 8: was more or less already out there and find ways

591
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,560
Speaker 8: to make it more efficient, cheaper, and to sell it

592
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 8: in a super effective way, originally to the government of course,

593
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 8: now to private enterprises. And I think in certain ways

594
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 8: he's followed that playbook with almost every company except maybe

595
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 8: arguably actually more than maybe with X.

596
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:42,920
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think that like all of his companies

597
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 6: still serve this larger purpose. So for example, the Boring Company,

598
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 6: which we think of as this like weird tunneling startup,

599
00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 6: that's like building tunnels under Las Vegas. Like if he does,

600
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 6: like colonize Mars, you're going to need to build tunnels

601
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 6: on Mars because there's not an atmosphere on Mars, so

602
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:01,040
Speaker 6: you have to like tear a form the planet first.

603
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 6: So like all of his companies have a role in

604
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:06,280
Speaker 6: like the bigger project, which is the Mars colony.

605
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 5: And just in the.

606
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 6: Way that you know he's using X to train the

607
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 6: X dot AI, and just the fact that so many

608
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 6: investors and executives and people are all related to each other.

609
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 6: It's like it's one big, kind of massive elon universe.

610
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 6: And I can't think of any other executive who has

611
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:31,480
Speaker 6: run so many companies simultaneously and he just keeps expanding.

612
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 6: I mean that's what's so, that's what's so wild, Like

613
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 6: you would think that SpaceX and Tesla would be enough,

614
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 6: and now he's got six companies.

615
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 2: So Dan, it just to be clear on this when

616
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 2: you talk about Mars and the vision is to get

617
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 2: to Mond, like should we take that literally?

618
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:44,880
Speaker 8: Like?

619
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 5: Oh, should we take it literally or seriously?

620
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 2: Like is really like the way to understand the constellation

621
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:53,760
Speaker 2: of companies as a combined project. That's a Mars project

622
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 2: and we should take it literally that that's what the

623
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 2: project is.

624
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 6: I mean that's how I take it. Yeah, because I

625
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 6: think that like you know, okay, is does Tesla have

626
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 6: a relationship to Mars? Not really, but like Musk's wealth

627
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 6: is he Like if you think about Musk needing wealth

628
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:10,680
Speaker 6: and the amount of money that will be needed to

629
00:32:10,720 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 6: go to Mars, Tesla plays a role on that. You're

630
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 6: gonna need internet service on Mars. You're gonna need like

631
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 6: if human beings are living on Mars are going to

632
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 6: need to communicate somehow. So yeah, I think of Mars

633
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 6: as being the guiding principle behind a lot of what

634
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 6: this guy does. And it does seem like fanciful and

635
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 6: Pie in the Sky. But then you think about how

636
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 6: many decisions he's made. It's all kind of with Mars

637
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 6: still at the apex of like what is driving him.

638
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 8: I mean you can see though, some of that starting

639
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 8: to stretch, right, I mean, like you don't need electric

640
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 8: cars on Mars. I mean you might need good batteries.

641
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 8: I guess I think he I think it's like seriously

642
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 8: not literally, like Elon Musk believes that it would be

643
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 8: great if we had a Mars colony, and I think

644
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 8: he does, actually, like with his own be want to

645
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:03,520
Speaker 8: visit Mars, And he's been able to use that as

646
00:33:03,560 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 8: a sort of animating force behind this business that in

647
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:07,959
Speaker 8: a lot of ways has like nothing to do with

648
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 8: I mean, SpaceX has something to do with going in

649
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 8: to Mars in the sense that like, oh well, eventually

650
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 8: the rockets will get big enough and so on. But

651
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 8: for many years, right, it had nothing to do with

652
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:16,920
Speaker 8: going to Mars. It was sending stuff to lower herbit.

653
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 8: But he's been able to use that belief as like

654
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 8: the kind of guiding light for SpaceX and amazingly for

655
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 8: all of these other companies like he's He's people think

656
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 8: of him as this amazing engineer, but he's also an

657
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 8: amazing marketer, somebody who's really good at sort of turning

658
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 8: something that can feel pretty pedestrian, Like, hey, right now,

659
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,239
Speaker 8: the boring company is digging a tunnel between like, you know,

660
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 8: one end of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the

661
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 8: Virgin Hotel, which is like very close if you've been

662
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 8: to Vegas, and coming up with a story that somehow

663
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 8: spins that as like this is all about our plan

664
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:51,280
Speaker 8: to colonize Mars. Right, It's kind of like a Steve

665
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 8: Jobs level exaggeration slash marketing. It's what makes him really successful,

666
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 8: but it's also what you know, brings on critics and

667
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 8: short sellers and and so on.

668
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 4: Why hasn't he started an agriculture technology business Because I

669
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:07,040
Speaker 4: feel like you're going to have to grow potatoes on Mars.

670
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 4: That's one thing I've learned from Hollywood, and that could

671
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 4: solve an earth problem too.

672
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 8: Right.

673
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:12,879
Speaker 3: Well, Kimba, his.

674
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 6: Brother Kimball, kind of does that, right. I mean, Kimball

675
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 6: is like the chef who's got this kitchen communities and

676
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:23,320
Speaker 6: he's growing organic food and teaching kids how to like cook,

677
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:26,320
Speaker 6: and he's got restaurants. I sort of feel like Kimball

678
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 6: plays that role.

679
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 8: I mean the most extreme version of this kind of

680
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 8: like weird flight of fancy thing that is the woke

681
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 8: mind virus. Right where when he took over Twitter. From

682
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 8: the outside, you're looking at this, You're like, Okay, this

683
00:34:36,840 --> 00:34:40,200
Speaker 8: is the guy who really likes this social media app.

684
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:43,160
Speaker 8: He really likes posting on it. He also has amazing

685
00:34:43,200 --> 00:34:46,400
Speaker 8: access to great investors. He's got some ideas, and after

686
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 8: buying it, you know, or I guess in the process

687
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 8: of buying it, he sort of concocted this idea that

688
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 8: Twitter would be the key to saving civilization from collapse. Like,

689
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,480
Speaker 8: because if the woke mind virus is Elon Musk describes it,

690
00:34:58,560 --> 00:35:01,320
Speaker 8: were to take over, then our martian quality would be

691
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 8: irrelevant because we'd all society would collapse. So I don't know,

692
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 8: it's like he's he's got an endless capacity to like

693
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 8: stitch these new companies into that pre existing narrative.

694
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:12,719
Speaker 2: Wait, Max, you said something I want to follow up on.

695
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 2: People think of Elon as a great engineer. Is he

696
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 2: a great engineer or is he a great product manager

697
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:23,560
Speaker 2: product dev who has done an objectively phenomenal job of

698
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:26,919
Speaker 2: bringing engineers together I mean, there's no question he's built

699
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 2: what he's built, and SpaceX is SpaceX and et cetera.

700
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:32,840
Speaker 2: Is he himself considered to have great engineering chops or

701
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:35,399
Speaker 2: is he just like a great like sort of manager type.

702
00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 8: Yes, Elon right, he's gonna he will insist he's a

703
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,240
Speaker 8: great engineer. In fact, he's like put it in his titles.

704
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 8: You know, his like official title at SpaceX has long

705
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:46,200
Speaker 8: been like chief rocket Designer. He like really embraces the

706
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 8: idea that he is involved in the engineering for better

707
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 8: or worse. You know, the cyber truck, as recounted in

708
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 8: the Walter Askcson book, like the cyber truck in a

709
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 8: lot of ways seems like a miss. And one of

710
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 8: the reasons is that Elon insisted on all these things. Now,

711
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 8: is that engineering? Is that product management? Like? I mean,

712
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 8: I don't know, I don't he's not. I don't think

713
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:05,359
Speaker 8: he's as hands on as as many people work for him,

714
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 8: although I will say he's definitely like way more hands

715
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 8: on than your average Silicon Valley CEO, and he prides

716
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 8: himself on that. And you know, for better or worse,

717
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 8: that's that's who he is.

718
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:18,040
Speaker 4: So going back to SpaceX, for a second, where does

719
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:21,840
Speaker 4: the money actually come from? Because this must be massively expensive.

720
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 4: We got the sense from Ashley that, you know, clearly

721
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 4: the business is exploding, but even with that revenue coming in,

722
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:31,719
Speaker 4: you're still talking about billions and billions of dollars of

723
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 4: upfront investment for something like rocket technology.

724
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 3: Who's funding that well, NASA.

725
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 6: I mean the company has sort of developed hand in

726
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 6: glove with NASA, which very early on, you know, after

727
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 6: the Space Shuttle program ended, NASA wanted commercial companies to

728
00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 6: kind of take the mantle and basically lead a charge

729
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 6: in terms of privatizing space, and NASA sort of put

730
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,440
Speaker 6: out bids for private companies to kind of bid on

731
00:36:56,520 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 6: the right to ferry not just cargo, but humans to

732
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:03,720
Speaker 6: the Internet National Space Station. Two companies one SpaceX and Boeing.

733
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:07,480
Speaker 6: SpaceX beat Boeing by years. I mean, SpaceX has been

734
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 6: bringing astronauts to and from the space station now for

735
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 6: a while. Boeing has yet to fly. Like, so NASA

736
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 6: was a huge and very early kind of supporter of SpaceX.

737
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 6: And then beyond NASA, like, if you think of the

738
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 6: launch market as like a three legged stool, there's NASA,

739
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 6: there's the US military, and then there's like other satellite companies,

740
00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:30,000
Speaker 6: So I mean the military is also huge. Like if

741
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:32,839
Speaker 6: you've got an NRO satellite going up there, you want

742
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 6: it to go up on an American rocket. So Elon

743
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:37,000
Speaker 6: has a lot of defense contracts as well.

744
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,439
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's funny because you often hear stories that are

745
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 8: like Elon Musk beat NASA, right, as if they're in competition,

746
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:47,800
Speaker 8: And in certain ways, I suppose that's true. Because SpaceX

747
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 8: is a privately held company, it develops things in a

748
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 8: somewhat different way than NASA has in the past. But

749
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,399
Speaker 8: you could tell a story about SpaceX where the hero

750
00:37:55,600 --> 00:37:58,080
Speaker 8: is not Elon Musk, it's some like George W. Bush,

751
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:01,959
Speaker 8: era administrator who has add the sort of brilliant idea

752
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:05,600
Speaker 8: to give contracts to these private companies for what had

753
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 8: become essentially a routine mission, Like we don't need to

754
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 8: spend all this money on the shuttle. We should let

755
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 8: the likes of Elon Musk do it. And it's to

756
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 8: NASA's credit that they went for that, but also of

757
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 8: course to Elon Musk credit that he, you know, followed

758
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 8: through on it and achieved it.

759
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:20,439
Speaker 4: Oh, just on that note, do you get the sense

760
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 4: that SpaceX is particularly adept at bidding for government contracts.

761
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:28,840
Speaker 4: Is it that they're like especially efficient at providing the

762
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 4: best cost benefit or is it that they're the only

763
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:34,800
Speaker 4: ones that have this technology or the only ones able

764
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 4: to do this at a certain scale.

765
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:38,480
Speaker 8: I mean, he's an amazing he's amazing at it, Dan,

766
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 8: go ahead, Yeah.

767
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 6: No, I mean that's the other thing that's sort of

768
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 6: a wild part of the backstory is SpaceX actually sued

769
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 6: the Air Force for the right to compete on these

770
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 6: national security missions. And everyone thought at the time, like,

771
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 6: why would you sue the Air Force if you're trying

772
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 6: to bid on these contracts. But they sued and they won,

773
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:57,840
Speaker 6: and then they started bidding and they absolutely win a

774
00:38:57,880 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 6: lot of the bidz because they are more cost effective.

775
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:03,720
Speaker 6: It's not a cost plus contract, it's just like it's cheaper.

776
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 6: And like the Air Force and the Pentagon love Elon Busk.

777
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 6: I mean, whenever he speaks at any of their like

778
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:13,919
Speaker 6: military installations, he's like wildly applauded by all the folks there.

779
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,200
Speaker 6: And then in turn, like SpaceX has been very shrewd

780
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,800
Speaker 6: about hiring former military people to come work at SpaceX.

781
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 6: So the whole revolving door thing. They have an incredible

782
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 6: lobbying team in Washington, d C. And so when SpaceX started,

783
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 6: it was on the outside of the military industrial complex,

784
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 6: and he very shrewdly kind of wormed his way into it,

785
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 6: and now he is very much a part of it

786
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 6: and like a big, big benefactor of it.

787
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 8: We shall also say, like one thing that makes SpaceX

788
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:42,600
Speaker 8: kind of unique in Elon world is this woman Gwen Shotwell,

789
00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:46,240
Speaker 8: who is the COO and who has been the person

790
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,200
Speaker 8: who has sort of led this push to like sell

791
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 8: these rockets to the military. As Dan and I talk

792
00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:53,919
Speaker 8: about all the time on the podcast, and we've spent

793
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 8: time with Gwen as well, Like they have a unique relationship.

794
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 8: She is like uniquely able to man edge Elon Musk to.

795
00:40:01,239 --> 00:40:03,479
Speaker 2: Get kind of does that not exist at the other

796
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 2: seven or eight companies, that sort of person who can

797
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:07,319
Speaker 2: manage him the same way?

798
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 8: No, it doesn't notari, I don't think it exists at

799
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 8: any of them.

800
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,080
Speaker 6: Yeah, because she's like the longest tenured person and she's

801
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:16,880
Speaker 6: the only person who's like the clear number two, Like

802
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,879
Speaker 6: Tesla doesn't have a clear number two whatever. There's been

803
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:22,239
Speaker 6: someone who seemed like the number two, they either get

804
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 6: fired or they quit, so she's got staying power and

805
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:28,319
Speaker 6: like this level of EQ that is sort of unparalleled

806
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:29,520
Speaker 6: at any of his other companies.

807
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 2: Is SpaceX profitable? Could we get a sent What are

808
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:33,799
Speaker 2: some of the numbers that we know about it?

809
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:34,440
Speaker 5: Revenue?

810
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 2: Profitabilities? Are we going to see an IPO? What are

811
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 2: the years are we talking about? Give us a talk

812
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 2: talk business for a second.

813
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 8: So probably not, but I don't think we totally know.

814
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:47,240
Speaker 8: And Elon Musk has sort of indicated in all sorts

815
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 8: of ways that he's not going to take SpaceX public.

816
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 8: What's sort of come out via reporting and like little

817
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:56,399
Speaker 8: dribs and drabs of what he said is that he'd

818
00:40:56,480 --> 00:40:59,359
Speaker 8: very much like to take Starlink public, but that would

819
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 8: leave space sex the defense contractor, to continue to be

820
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:06,800
Speaker 8: his domain. That kind of makes sense because in theory,

821
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 8: again there are real challenges with starlink business that I'm

822
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 8: not sure everyone totally appreciates. But in theory, that could

823
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 8: be a very profitable business, lots of customers, it's like

824
00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:18,040
Speaker 8: easy to model out and so on, and in theory

825
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 8: could be separate from SpaceX. The other thing is Starlink

826
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:24,240
Speaker 8: would create lots and lots of demand for SpaceX launches

827
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:26,400
Speaker 8: because like if you're launching all these little satellites in

828
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 8: the space and you have to do it continuously because

829
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,400
Speaker 8: they follow the sky, eventually that's going to create lots

830
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:34,239
Speaker 8: of demand that SpaceX could use like long run to

831
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 8: keep the rocket program developing and you know, eventually get

832
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 8: to Mars. Yeah.

833
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:39,719
Speaker 6: I also think that Elon doesn't really like being a

834
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 6: public company CEO. I mean, he tried to take Tesla

835
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 6: private in twenty eighteen, was forced to basically, you know,

836
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:49,080
Speaker 6: go back on that idea and keep it public. But

837
00:41:49,160 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 6: he kind of hates it. Like he hates the disclosures,

838
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 6: he hates the rigamarole of earnings calls, he hates Delaware law.

839
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 6: You know, like there's a lot more scrutiny on you

840
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 6: when you are a publicly traded company. And so I

841
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 6: kind of think going public is like a last resort

842
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 6: for him. I mean, you go public when you are

843
00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 6: trying to raise money, but if you can raise money

844
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 6: without it, I think he would prefer to stay private

845
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 6: for as long as possible.

846
00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 8: I Mean there's also like a tension here because he

847
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 8: doesn't want to go public. He hates the idea of

848
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 8: giving up control is terrible. On the other hand, he's

849
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,160
Speaker 8: so good at dealing with Wall Street and like, really,

850
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 8: and I guess that's the line he's trying to walk

851
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 8: with Starlink. You know, you're able to like break off

852
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 8: this piece of the business that maybe he doesn't care

853
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:31,320
Speaker 8: that much about, which allows him to tap capital markets,

854
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 8: get his investors some kind of return while also keeping

855
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 8: his first love his own.

856
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 2: Danna and Max, thank you so much for coming on

857
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 2: odd Latch, really appreciate it.

858
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 8: Great to be here.

859
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:49,120
Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having us.

860
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,480
Speaker 2: Tracy, I'm really glad we had those conversations because well,

861
00:42:57,520 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 2: I just want to understand more. But now I like

862
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 2: more even fully appreciate what an extraordinary sort of I

863
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:06,839
Speaker 2: guess moment it is that one private individual has such

864
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 2: a stranglehold I guess, so to speak on space right.

865
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 3: Now, I'm kind of reusable rocket pills.

866
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:13,800
Speaker 5: Yeah. Oh and very interacting.

867
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 4: Yeah No, that was fascinating. There was so much to

868
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 4: pick out of that conversation. One thing I thought was

869
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:22,719
Speaker 4: really interesting was when Ashley was talking about NASA and

870
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 4: the sort of headline risk it felt around rockets and

871
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 4: various space launches that ended up being a limiting factor

872
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 4: in developing the technology, and we kind of see that

873
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 4: time and time again with government projects.

874
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 1: Right.

875
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:35,880
Speaker 5: Yeah, So on the one.

876
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:38,840
Speaker 4: Hand, the government can be incredibly influential when it comes to,

877
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,480
Speaker 4: you know, promoting or designing new technology, but on the

878
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:44,759
Speaker 4: other hand, it can end up being very, very conservative

879
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 4: because if something fails, it's a waste of tax payer

880
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:50,280
Speaker 4: money and you got all these negative headlines.

881
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:52,799
Speaker 2: Totally, I had not thought about that at all, but

882
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:55,680
Speaker 2: it makes so much sense that, like we just come

883
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 2: to think about, like we know what a rocket is, right,

884
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 2: It's this extremely expensive, one time thing. It has to

885
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:06,359
Speaker 2: be so reliable that we could put human life in it,

886
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 2: and you know, that was the whole purpose. And you know,

887
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:11,319
Speaker 2: Ashley talked about this sort of the rocket is the

888
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:16,840
Speaker 2: sort of representation of a nation scientific achievements, particularly during

889
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,759
Speaker 2: the Cold War. But that doesn't necessarily lend itself to

890
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,759
Speaker 2: great commercial operations because it's so expensive. And then you

891
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 2: could sort of understand how a company can say, like, wait,

892
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:26,759
Speaker 2: maybe we can rethink this.

893
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:27,280
Speaker 3: Yeah.

894
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 4: The other thing I would say is it feels like

895
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:31,839
Speaker 4: a lot of this kind of happened in the background,

896
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 4: like the slow growth of SpaceX and Elon's empire and

897
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:41,760
Speaker 4: the dominance of things like Starlink. But now with Ukraine

898
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:44,800
Speaker 4: and Russia and various other things, it's kind of bursting

899
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 4: into the public consciousness, and I wonder if there's going

900
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 4: to be more awareness, let's say, of that dominance.

901
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:54,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I just don't see how any government anywhere

902
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 2: could not be incredibly anxious about that. I mean, it

903
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 2: seems to be the advantage of the US government that

904
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:04,600
Speaker 2: it is an American company that is so dominant, et cetera.

905
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 2: But obviously Elon is Elon, and so I don't know

906
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 2: how much like any government wants to like sort of

907
00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 2: depend on that. And then for if you're China or

908
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 2: if you're Japan, or if you're Europe, SpaceX is not

909
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 2: one of your companies. And I don't know, it feels

910
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 2: like the sort of national security implications everywhere. I just

911
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:26,520
Speaker 2: imagine militaries and space agencies around the world must be exciting.

912
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:28,319
Speaker 5: Of all kinds of alarm bowls.

913
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 4: The alarm bills would say, it's Elon's universe.

914
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 2: I mean it literally is also like the idea like

915
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 2: it really is about Mars is like I find to

916
00:45:38,080 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 2: be like a really like fascinating idea that like you

917
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 2: put all these things together, boring tunnels, batteries, space, internet,

918
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 2: satellite like the unifying idea here.

919
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 4: Where does the flamethrower fit in?

920
00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:54,840
Speaker 5: You got any How are you going to fight the Martians?

921
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 5: I mean, isn't that obvious? Like the Martians aren't going

922
00:45:57,440 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 5: to fight themselves, They're gonna have.

923
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 4: To Like Martians are going to fight themselves, you gotta

924
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,439
Speaker 4: bring the flamethrowers. No, that was kind of an eye

925
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 4: opening way, I guess of making sense of what it

926
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 4: first seems like a very disparate universe of companies. So yeah,

927
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 4: I thought that was incredibly interesting and definitely going to

928
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 4: be watching what SpaceX does next.

929
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:17,640
Speaker 5: Likewise, shall we leave it there?

930
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:20,760
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there, And a big thank you to Ashley,

931
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:23,279
Speaker 2: Max and Dana and make sure you check out the

932
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:23,919
Speaker 2: Elon Inc.

933
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:24,520
Speaker 5: Podcast.

934
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:26,840
Speaker 2: You can find and subscribe to that in all the

935
00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 2: regular places.

936
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 4: This has been another episode of the au Thoughts podcast.

937
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:33,960
Speaker 4: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

938
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,320
Speaker 2: And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.

939
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:39,759
Speaker 2: Follow Ashley Vance. He's at Ashley Vance. Follow Dana Hall.

940
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 2: She's at Dana Hall and follow Max Chafkin He's at

941
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 2: Chafkin and follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carman Arman

942
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,160
Speaker 2: dash O Bennett at Dashbot and Cal Brooks at cal Brooks.

943
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:54,520
Speaker 2: And thank you to our special producer elon Ink producer

944
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:57,280
Speaker 2: Magnus Hendrickson who used to be years ago.

945
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 5: Reunited with Magnus. Thank you to our producer Moses on Them.

946
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 2: For more Oddlots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash

947
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 2: odd Lots, where you have transcripts, a blog, and a

948
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:10,760
Speaker 2: newsletter and you can chat about all of these topics

949
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,760
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven in the discord Discord dot gg

950
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:14,880
Speaker 2: slash od Lots.

951
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 4: And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it

952
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:20,520
Speaker 4: when we talk about reusable rockets and satellites falling out

953
00:47:20,520 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 4: of the air, then please leave us a positive review

954
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,239
Speaker 4: on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are

955
00:47:26,239 --> 00:47:28,520
Speaker 4: a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our

956
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:31,520
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Speaker 4: do that, just find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts.

959
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:39,280
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening

960
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 8: In