Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 3: controlled by one man.
Speaker 2: Well, he's a legitimate super genius.
Speaker 1: I mean legitimate.
Speaker 4: He says he's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 4: it will be different.
Speaker 5: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 6: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 6: on him.
Speaker 1: Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 5: Anything he does, he's fascinating people.
Speaker 3: Welcome to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 3: It's Tuesday, September seventeenth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. Now
Speaker 3: following Elon can be a lot. One day he'll ekes
Speaker 3: out a wild conspiracy theory or offer to give Taylor
Speaker 3: Swift a child, and the next he's inking some multi
Speaker 3: billion dollar government contractor meeting with a powerful world leader.
Speaker 3: You just never know what you're gonna get when you
Speaker 3: open the newspaper. Will it be doctor Elon or will
Speaker 3: it be mister Musk. Sometimes it's a little of both,
Speaker 3: as was the case his past week. In recent days,
Speaker 3: Elon somehow inserted himself in the center of some of
Speaker 3: the most controversial and ugly moments of a presidential campaign
Speaker 3: season that has been frankly nothing but controversial and ugly. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: his company, SpaceX made history one day and then landed
Speaker 3: a seriously good contract the other. To cure the spinning
Speaker 3: in my head, I'm joined in the studio by our
Speaker 3: regulars Elon Musk, reporter Dana Hall there, Dana Hey, BusinessWeek
Speaker 3: writer Max Chafkin, Max Hey, David, and Sarah, a friar
Speaker 3: who runs our Big Tech coverboard.
Speaker 6: Sarah, Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Okay, so, and then later on we're going to be
Speaker 3: joined by Eric Johnson, our Space editor, to talk SpaceX.
Speaker 3: But Sarah, let's start with the e sing. So, as
Speaker 3: far as I could tell, and I was doing my
Speaker 3: darnness not to pay too much attention, but mostly failing,
Speaker 3: I've seen Elon on some kind of role. He did
Speaker 3: his best to spread the rumor that Haitian immigrants are
Speaker 3: consuming cats and dogs. He did, indeed tell Taylor Swift
Speaker 3: that he would give her a child, and then, in
Speaker 3: the wake of what appears to be a second assassination
Speaker 3: attempt on the former president Donald Trump. He wondered in
Speaker 3: an ex why no one is taking a crack at
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden Sarah. He would go on
Speaker 3: to delete that ex but the damage was done.
Speaker 6: H The deleting was probably the most surprising part of that,
Speaker 6: the fact that he you know, backed down and took
Speaker 6: it back. I think we are just seeing Musk go
Speaker 6: on an absolute power trip over these conspiracies that I
Speaker 6: think are very popular in the Trump dvance world, but
Speaker 6: of course have have little connection or no connection in
Speaker 6: the case of the Haitian conspiracy to reality. And I
Speaker 6: think that it doesn't matter for Musk. When he took
Speaker 6: over Twitter, if you remember, he said, like, you know,
Speaker 6: humor is allowed on the Internet. Again, those aren't his
Speaker 6: exact words, but he sees this as like as like
Speaker 6: playing online trolling and posting, and am I allowed to
Speaker 6: say posting?
Speaker 3: You just did?
Speaker 6: I just did that is I think the technical term
Speaker 6: for like just going absolutely wild on the internet against
Speaker 6: your rivals and then saying it was.
Speaker 1: All a joke, which is what he said about.
Speaker 6: That Kamala Biden. You know, why have and they've been
Speaker 6: assassinated to get comment. Of course, these things that he
Speaker 6: does do not exist in some you know X group
Speaker 6: chat vacuum that he has. They have real world implications.
Speaker 6: There have been bomb threats on schools in Springfield, where
Speaker 6: one of the cities that has been a target of
Speaker 6: those anti immigrant rumors, and coming out and adding fuel
Speaker 6: to that fire has real world danger. And it really
Speaker 6: doesn't seem to resonate with Musk that that's something that
Speaker 6: he is control of, or maybe if he does sense
Speaker 6: that he has power over it, he doesn't care.
Speaker 1: You know what's weird to me about this is that
Speaker 1: Musk is someone who is deeply paranoid about his own security, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, he travels with a phalanx of bodyguards, he
Speaker 1: has young kids. There are all kinds of like fans
Speaker 1: and stalkers who are trying to like climb over the
Speaker 1: SpaceX fence to get to him. And there was actually
Speaker 1: like a disgruntled Tesla employee who drove to Austin from
Speaker 1: Minnesota after threatening to kill both Joe Biden and Elon. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: like the cops got wind of bit ahead of time
Speaker 1: and they arrested this guy. But like Musk knows that,
Speaker 1: like there are serious attempts, you know, on all political
Speaker 1: leaders and on himself. And so for someone who is
Speaker 1: so paranoid about his own security to kind of make
Speaker 1: this flippant, quote unquote joke about the current president. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just sort of wonder legally if it if it's
Speaker 1: incitement of violence, because that's certainly what critics are saying.
Speaker 1: And I wonder, like, you know, he left it up
Speaker 1: for hours, it got forty million impressions. Did he take
Speaker 1: it down because he got a phone call from the
Speaker 1: FBI or the Secret Service? Or was there just like
Speaker 1: enough of a backlash among his employees, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: that tweet was up for quite a long time, and
Speaker 1: now he's just sort of back at it again today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Max, you looked into the legality question, what
Speaker 3: would you find?
Speaker 2: So in the United States famously has very expansive, very
Speaker 2: expansive view of free speech, whu more expansive than in
Speaker 2: other countries. You know, what Musk did is probably legal.
Speaker 2: The Supreme Court has held that it needs to be
Speaker 2: a true threat. In other words, if you're joking, if
Speaker 2: you're just spouting off, if you're engaging in political speech.
Speaker 2: I think all of those are potential explanations for what
Speaker 2: Musk was doing, and of course he offered the joking explanation.
Speaker 2: You're allowed to get you know, you're allowed to use
Speaker 2: violent metaphors and so on, so it's unlikely that it's illegal.
Speaker 2: But I do think Dan is probably right that that
Speaker 2: somebody in a position of authority may have complained, because
Speaker 2: of course Musk isn't just a regular guy. He's got
Speaker 2: a huge following, and these the words that he is
Speaker 2: saying have consequences, consequences for real people. And Sarah brought
Speaker 2: up what's happened in Springfield, where Springfield, Ohio, where schools
Speaker 2: have closed, where people are suffering because of these lies
Speaker 2: that are being you know, transmitted, generated by Elon Musk
Speaker 2: and others on his platform, and and like, you know,
Speaker 2: we're seeing another version of it. You know, he took
Speaker 2: it down and offered kind of a lame explanation that
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense because I don't think it was funny.
Speaker 2: But of course he's saying it was a joke, so
Speaker 2: hopefully he won't suggest that any other public figures need
Speaker 2: to be assassinated in the future.
Speaker 6: It's just so so frequently the response to this kind
Speaker 6: of thing, this kind of thing is that, you know,
Speaker 6: outrage from liberals is kind of the goal. Like when
Speaker 6: this kind of thing happens, it's it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: we made them freak out again, Like how do they
Speaker 6: not understand our humor? Like why are they such you know,
Speaker 6: I remember the term snowflakes in the earlier Trump administration. Right,
Speaker 6: this is almost a means to to provoke, to to
Speaker 6: get a reaction, to troll to troll. And I think
Speaker 6: that the Kamala Harris campaign their strategy is to kind
Speaker 6: of like point and laugh when when Republicans do that,
Speaker 6: instead kind of leaning into the oh my gosh, we're
Speaker 6: so horrified, this is so scary Sarah.
Speaker 3: Which is what she did so effectively during the debate
Speaker 3: when Trump launched into his hole in Springfield. They're eating
Speaker 3: the cats, they're eating the dogs. She did break out
Speaker 3: into laughter. I guess the other question I have, though, Max,
Speaker 3: is when he took it down and before he did,
Speaker 3: I wonder if the government had particular leverage on him,
Speaker 3: given the nature the contracts that he's got with the
Speaker 3: Defense Department, with NASAU, with with other departments across the
Speaker 3: across the government.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have to think it didn't get that far.
Speaker 2: I mean, it does there is like something strange and
Speaker 2: potentially interesting about about a major defense contractor first of all,
Speaker 2: major defense hunter getting so involved in the political processes
Speaker 2: as Elon Musk has, but also you know, obviously like
Speaker 2: going more towards a tiptoeing the line towards incitement like
Speaker 2: that seems like the kind of thing that the Defense
Speaker 2: Department and others probably consider problematic. But my guess is
Speaker 2: like FBI, somebody in a position of authority gave him
Speaker 2: a friendly call and suggested that what he was doing
Speaker 2: was dangerous without having to exert any extra pressure.
Speaker 3: And danis So I guess this has got me just
Speaker 3: thinking that the whole thing, especially this ratitat that rapid fire,
Speaker 3: you know, him inserting himself into one of these you know,
Speaker 3: big issues after another and really throwing himself into the
Speaker 3: political sphere is just a window into the extreme politization
Speaker 3: of Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Well the way that I think of it as twofold. So,
Speaker 1: you know, on the one hand, Musk is using his money.
Speaker 1: He created a super pack called America Pack. They are
Speaker 1: not just funding, you know, helping to fund the Trump campaign,
Speaker 1: but they are now going down ballot, like we have
Speaker 1: a stor out this morning based on an FC filing
Speaker 1: that I spotted really late last night. They are now
Speaker 1: funding like over fifteen house races and key districts in Maine,
Speaker 1: in Nebraska, California, Ohio, New Jersey, New York. Like he
Speaker 1: is all in. He's like the new Sheldon Nagelsen right
Speaker 1: in terms of just like funding not just Trump but
Speaker 1: you know, but very key congressional races in an attempt
Speaker 1: to keep the House. But separately, the way that he
Speaker 1: behaves on X, the platform that he owns, is like
Speaker 1: an in kind contribution to the Trump campaign because Trump
Speaker 1: and Vans are running on immigration and fear, and Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is all about amplifying those fears and amplifying all
Speaker 1: this nonsense about you know, immigration and crime, and like
Speaker 1: he so it's like it's like a tacit.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the campaigns are coordinating, but like
Speaker 1: that is the main message of the Trump Vans campaign,
Speaker 1: and those are the main messages that Musk is amplifying
Speaker 1: on the platform that he owns.
Speaker 3: No, that's absolutely right. And I guess the question I
Speaker 3: have for you guys is, you know, to me, as
Speaker 3: I watched the way it played out two days later
Speaker 3: at the debate. It comes out of Trump's mouth and
Speaker 3: that ramble. It comes off to me watching it from apart,
Speaker 3: as patently absurd and a losing hand for the Republicans
Speaker 3: and for their candidate.
Speaker 5: It's not a.
Speaker 1: Losing hand because it's all anyone is talking about. It's
Speaker 1: like it is a strategy, because all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: everyone is talking about cats and dogs and Haiti and
Speaker 1: immigration and not the economy and abortion rights, and it
Speaker 1: is a strategy.
Speaker 2: There's a difference though, between saying it's a good strategy
Speaker 2: and it's a strategy. I think Dan is right. It
Speaker 2: is a strategy, and depending on what happens, we can
Speaker 2: conclude that it was good or bad. But it does not,
Speaker 2: on its face a good strategy. I think most people
Speaker 2: when you look at the polling of that debate, the
Speaker 2: polling was very much in Harris's favor. We've talked about
Speaker 2: the ways that Elon Musk has sort of red pilled
Speaker 2: himself into the fringe and how that is bad for business.
Speaker 2: I think it's also bad for Donald Trump. The fringe
Speaker 2: is not a majority, but.
Speaker 6: If you watch the debate, sure, but people aren't getting
Speaker 6: their information from the events as they happen anymore, they're
Speaker 6: getting the information as it's recycled and remixed by online commentators,
Speaker 6: and so in that world, this doesn't actually matter if
Speaker 6: something is true. It just matters if one of the
Speaker 6: people you follow, who you admire says it's good for
Speaker 6: Trump process.
Speaker 3: That's definitely a fair point, and you know, all shall
Speaker 3: be revealed when they cast the votes in early November.
Speaker 3: But Sarah, I would say that a a lot of
Speaker 3: people actually did watch that debate. I don't remember the
Speaker 3: exact number, but it was a significant chunk of the population.
Speaker 3: And b again, I get how everyone's talking about it,
Speaker 3: but you know, when Hillary Clinton made that big mistake
Speaker 3: of uttering the words, you know, calling a large chunk
Speaker 3: of the Trump supporters or was it a basket of
Speaker 3: the poor plorable, everybody was talking about that as well,
Speaker 3: and that was an unmitigated disaster for her campaign. But
Speaker 3: you know, Dana, you've been doing a lot of reporting
Speaker 3: on the activity of Musk's pack. I believe you guys
Speaker 3: are reported recently that they've we've seen some of the
Speaker 3: numbers in terms of the kind of money they've actually
Speaker 3: been spending in the last couple months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's so it's the filings tick up
Speaker 1: every you know, like there's basically like a filing every
Speaker 1: night that looks at their expenditures and the total spent
Speaker 1: by the pack is fifty million. And this is on
Speaker 1: everything's from text messages to mailers to hiring door knockers
Speaker 1: and key states like North Carolina and Michigan. But Musk
Speaker 1: is also going down ballot and in this filing last night,
Speaker 1: you're seeing them spend it's like roughly two million dollars
Speaker 1: on like fifteen different house races and that that might
Speaker 1: not sound like a lot of money, but like we're
Speaker 1: going to continue to see spending between now and November,
Speaker 1: and just the fact that they are now targeting the
Speaker 1: house just shows that, like Musk is going for the
Speaker 1: trifecta and you know these are these are key races
Speaker 1: that could that could swing you know, they're just gonna
Speaker 1: be very important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got actually one of the ads here that
Speaker 3: has been produced by his pack. Let's listen to it.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 7: If you sit the selection out, Kamala and the Crazies
Speaker 7: will win. That means you'll be stuck with igher costs
Speaker 7: and more illegals invading our country. Now Trump is the
Speaker 7: American badass. Will stop this nonsense, vote for Trump and
Speaker 7: save America.
Speaker 3: You know what, this whole thing strikes me as as
Speaker 3: a lifelong gambler who knows what it's like as you're
Speaker 3: getting towards the end of the end of the day
Speaker 3: at the races and your down money max is, you know,
Speaker 3: you start doubling and tripling down to try to get
Speaker 3: out and try to get back to even or up money.
Speaker 3: I get the sense that when he, you know, launched
Speaker 3: in and threw his support behind Trump, things were looking
Speaker 3: rosy and pretty darn good, and now that they're looking
Speaker 3: a little less good, you know, he's like I get
Speaker 3: a little bit of this double and triple down sense.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that Dana and Sarah are both
Speaker 2: hinting at this in various ways. But like, you know,
Speaker 2: turning out your base is like one part part of
Speaker 2: how you win an election, and like I think you
Speaker 2: could kind of you can, you know, interpret this ad
Speaker 2: in that way as like this is a way to
Speaker 2: increase turnout among people who are likely to support President Trump.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, it does feel just like the
Speaker 2: kind like just not something that is gonna like sway
Speaker 2: a swing voter. I just taken a couple steps back.
Speaker 2: One thing that has struck me listening to Dana and
Speaker 2: reading her reporting is just when Elon Musk first started
Speaker 2: talking about these donations, right there was all of this
Speaker 2: question like is he really gonna do it? He kind
Speaker 2: of created all this uncertainty. He's like, I'm not supporting Trump,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm just creating a meritocratic pack or whatever, and
Speaker 2: like that's all out the window right this. And it's
Speaker 2: not only out the window in the sense that he
Speaker 2: is all in for Trump, as you're saying, as we're
Speaker 2: all saying, but also in the sense that he's spending
Speaker 2: real money, Like we're fifty three million dollars. That's that's
Speaker 2: where it is. I just looked according to Open secrets
Speaker 2: dot Com. Could be a day or something late, but
Speaker 2: like that's fairly up to date in terms of how
Speaker 2: much money they spent. That's a big number. That makes
Speaker 2: it one of the biggest independent committees this cycle to date,
Speaker 2: and there's it's going to go up from there, Like
Speaker 2: he We're going to look back on this as being
Speaker 2: an election where Elon Musk put a significant amount of
Speaker 2: money to work. Comparing Micheldon Adelson I think is the
Speaker 2: correct comparison.
Speaker 3: And for the uninitiated, Sheldon Aedelson.
Speaker 2: Was a prominent, a very wealthy Republican donor who donated
Speaker 2: to conservative causes and was Trump's main backer.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk. His rationale for like supporting Trump was he
Speaker 2: watched the assassination attempt, the first assassination attempt, and thought
Speaker 2: like wow, like this guy is really tough. And that
Speaker 2: that was like how he explained his rationale of support.
Speaker 3: We need to say goodbye to Sarah, but Max and
Speaker 3: Dana don't go anywhere, Sarah. We will see you soon.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we're now done with politics and conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: We're done with mister Musk. We shall now move on
Speaker 3: to doctor Elon and his business empire, which up in
Speaker 3: space is doing quite quite well. Last week, his space company, SpaceX,
Speaker 3: pulled off the first commercial spacewalk in history, and then
Speaker 3: a day or so later, a unit of SpaceX, Starlink,
Speaker 3: signed a big deal to provide the Internet to United Airlines.
Speaker 3: And to talk about that, we've got Eric Johnson, our
Speaker 3: crack Space editor. Hey there, Eric, good to be here, Okay, Eric,
Speaker 3: So it's my understanding here that with this SpaceX commercial
Speaker 3: spacewalk they pulled off that there are a few records
Speaker 3: and firsts achieved hit us with them.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: So is a big week for SpaceX. You saw four
Speaker 4: crew civilians, relatively untrained astronauts go up and perform the
Speaker 4: world's first commercial space Let.
Speaker 3: Me interrupt you for a second and say, by the way,
Speaker 3: while when we say space walk throughout the show here,
Speaker 3: our listeners won't see it, but we're gonna do air
Speaker 3: quotes around walk. Okay, space walk.
Speaker 5: I was waiting for you to jump in on that.
Speaker 4: So just to be clear, they didn't actually walk anywhere, right,
Speaker 4: This wasn't like the Apollo era moon landings. But they
Speaker 4: did go fourteen hundred kilometers up, which is the furthest
Speaker 4: that humans have gone since the moon landings, and so
Speaker 4: that was an incredible milestone.
Speaker 5: Another thing that.
Speaker 4: They achieved was actually depressurizing the capsule in the middle
Speaker 4: Lovelus to set up the walk, and so they actually
Speaker 4: opened the hatch and expose the entire interior to the
Speaker 4: vacuum of space. And so two of them, billionaire Jared
Speaker 4: Eisaman and SpaceX is Sarah Gillis, an engineer, actually took
Speaker 4: turns and for a few minutes halfway out of the capsule, roughly.
Speaker 3: They were so frits popping out of like a hole
Speaker 3: or something is what.
Speaker 5: Or like a turtle put his head out and then
Speaker 5: sucking it back in.
Speaker 4: But you know, to be fair, they were hurtling around
Speaker 4: the Earth at you know, seventeen thousand miles per hour.
Speaker 4: It's dangerous, precarious, and and so they they emerged from
Speaker 4: the capsule, they did some maneuvers with a relatively sleek
Speaker 4: and skinnier spacesuit that SpaceX designed and test the mobility
Speaker 4: of it, and then went back in, returned pressure to
Speaker 4: the cabin and came home, you know, just for people
Speaker 4: to understand, I mean, they were higher up than the
Speaker 4: International Space Station, and so you know, everybody knows that
Speaker 4: spacewalks are relatively common. I mean we've seen them, of course,
Speaker 4: you know in Hollywood, but we see the astronauts and
Speaker 4: their huge bulky spacesuits go out the ISS and they
Speaker 4: do repairs and different fixes on the station. But this
Speaker 4: was the first. This is different than that in that
Speaker 4: they were in their own spacecraft separate from anything else
Speaker 4: and exposed to the vacuum of space for the direction.
Speaker 3: Now I get the sense here that a lot of
Speaker 3: this mission was about those super cool, sleek space suits
Speaker 3: and testing them out. Was that the I mean, and
Speaker 3: I guess in addition to charging this billionaire money to
Speaker 3: give them this space walk or space walk, was it
Speaker 3: all about testing out these suits?
Speaker 4: That was a major mission parameter is you know, we
Speaker 4: don't exactly know what SpaceX intends to do with these suits,
Speaker 4: but visually, at least esthetically, I mean, you know, SpaceX
Speaker 4: elon Musk they love aesthetics. So if you compare the
Speaker 4: suits they were wearing to the traditional suits, they were
Speaker 4: you know, thinner and usually like skinny go skinny jeans, skinny,
Speaker 4: and so when they came out of the capsule, you
Speaker 4: saw them moving their arms around. You know, they still
Speaker 4: didn't have total mobility. But the idea, presumably is that
Speaker 4: there's space actual have an iterative approach to these suits,
Speaker 4: so they will be used in some form for future missions.
Speaker 4: They'll be upgraded and then you know, when they go
Speaker 4: people go to Mars at some point, maybe some futuristic
Speaker 4: version of this suit.
Speaker 3: Will be used everyone's going to be wearing skinny jeans
Speaker 3: and skinny suits up on Mark. What I mean, Dana,
Speaker 3: when you just did that whole Mars interview last week,
Speaker 3: did the I can't remember, did the space suits come up?
Speaker 1: We didn't really talk about the spacesuits. Kirsen and I
Speaker 1: were talking more about like how people are going to
Speaker 1: eat on Mars and what their protein source is going
Speaker 1: to be. But I do have a question for Eric,
Speaker 1: Like I barely paid attention to this mission. All I
Speaker 1: knew was that like a billionaire and was one of
Speaker 1: the people on Polaris John, So did he fund this
Speaker 1: whole thing?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: How did this whole how did this whole like sort
Speaker 1: of joint venture come about between these private people that
Speaker 1: wanted to go up and SpaceX being the cap being
Speaker 1: the launch provider that got them there.
Speaker 4: That's a great point, is that so SpaceX supplied the
Speaker 4: rocket and the capsule put it up.
Speaker 5: Jared isisming bankrolled it, right.
Speaker 4: We don't know how much he's spent to do that,
Speaker 4: but he's a massive aviation enthusiast, he's a pilot. And
Speaker 4: then you know, of course you have the SpaceX personnel
Speaker 4: that joined and so this is part of the Polaris program,
Speaker 4: which is a multi mission program bankrolled by Isaacman. This
Speaker 4: was one of the first steps or second flight actually
Speaker 4: the first time the private crew went around the Earth
Speaker 4: a few times and came back. This time they did
Speaker 4: a spacewalk, and then there'll be additional missions in the
Speaker 4: future that will culminate at some point with a crude
Speaker 4: mission on one of SpaceX's colossal starship rockets. Don't know
Speaker 4: when that is, and we don't know exactly what parameters
Speaker 4: or shape these missions will take, but it's part of
Speaker 4: the Polaris program.
Speaker 3: We need to come back to Earth or closer to
Speaker 3: Earth and talk about this big deal that SpaceX is
Speaker 3: starlink unit signed with United Airlines.
Speaker 5: Tell us about it again.
Speaker 4: Big week for SpaceX. This was a pretty landmark deal,
Speaker 4: a watershed moment. This was the first US major airline
Speaker 4: that SpaceX has been able to woo to its starlink service. So,
Speaker 4: you know, as everyone knows, Starlink has grown to be
Speaker 4: the most advanced and largest, you know, space beamed internet
Speaker 4: service globally. They've made substantial inroads with maritime shippers, cruise lines.
Speaker 4: They are on some airlines already like Air Baltic and
Speaker 4: Hawaiian and JSX, but they finally were able to crack
Speaker 4: into the US aviation network.
Speaker 5: It's early, they have a lot to prove, but this.
Speaker 4: Deal is significant in that you know, they've got more
Speaker 4: than three million subscribers globally for on the consumer side,
Speaker 4: so it's a strong sign to growth. And I think
Speaker 4: you saw that in the reaction of the stocks from
Speaker 4: legacy satellite.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did notice that. You know, Visa sat which is
Speaker 3: one of those legacy providers. Yeah, it's stock collapsed fifteen
Speaker 3: percent that day. Go Go another one fell a fair amount. Obviously,
Speaker 3: Max Starlink and SpaceX are private companies, so it's hard
Speaker 3: to see. It's hard to know just what kind of
Speaker 3: value investors are putting on a deal like this. But
Speaker 3: if you take the inverse of those collapses and those stocks, well,
Speaker 3: presumably it's an increase in the in the value of
Speaker 3: SpaceX and stock.
Speaker 1: I just have to say, as someone who recently flew
Speaker 1: from Washington, d C. To San Francisco on United where
Speaker 1: I had to pay eight dollars for really lousy Wi Fi, like,
Speaker 1: I think this is great, like as a consumer, and
Speaker 1: I think that Starlink is going to be a big
Speaker 1: It's going to be a big revenue maker for SpaceX.
Speaker 1: I guess the question I always have is like when
Speaker 1: or is SpaceX going to spin out Starlink, because at
Speaker 1: one point there was this whole idea that Starlink was
Speaker 1: going to be spun out as like a separate business
Speaker 1: and IPO separately from SpaceX as a whole. But we
Speaker 1: haven't really heard much about that recently. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: not separate companies. Starlink is basically like the big business
Speaker 1: unit within SpaceX.
Speaker 2: So the one thing I'll say about this is that, like,
Speaker 2: it's great news obviously for SpaceX. Totally agree with what
Speaker 2: Eric's saying, but like these companies that you're talking about,
Speaker 2: Eric via sad, these are not large businesses, not by
Speaker 2: Elon Musk standards. Like Vasat's market cap not sure how
Speaker 2: much tiny it's yeah it's tiny, Yeah one point seven.
Speaker 2: I just looked it up, and you know, obviously the
Speaker 2: stock fell a lot. But with SpaceX, they're talking about valuations,
Speaker 2: and even if it's if it's just Starlink, we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about a much much larger valuation. And
Speaker 2: I don't think it's clear yet that the company has
Speaker 2: come anywhere near living up to that. Selling internet to
Speaker 2: consumers is a very difficult, very competitive business. It's if
Speaker 2: to make this work, it's like going to be some
Speaker 2: combination of kind of the Elon Musk Elon Musk kind
Speaker 2: of ability to tell a story, and the story has
Speaker 2: to be that like they're taking the whole market because
Speaker 2: the because the markets for these things are not very large.
Speaker 3: But you know, Eric, for me, actually, I was thinking
Speaker 3: that as I see this deal get inked, and I
Speaker 3: think about the way it's increasingly being used in places
Speaker 3: like you know, the remote you know, farms in Brazil,
Speaker 3: certainly for all its you know, defense and wartime applications,
Speaker 3: the way it's being used in maritime and so on
Speaker 3: and so forth. That to me, I feel like the
Speaker 3: business model and the growth model for Starlink are starting
Speaker 3: to come more clearly into focus. Max is obviously having
Speaker 3: none of it.
Speaker 4: What say you, I think Max makes some very good Max,
Speaker 4: but the growth of Starlink and the challenges. When I
Speaker 4: saw this press release, my first thought is, Okay, SpaceX
Speaker 4: has finally been able to demonstrate to a global US
Speaker 4: carrier that this service can be better than what it
Speaker 4: has it for years struggled to do that because they
Speaker 4: had capacity problems. And I have to get a little
Speaker 4: geeky for a second. The companies whose stocks were battered
Speaker 4: operate colossal satellites that are orbit in fixed position over
Speaker 4: the Earth, very high up, much higher than SpaceX's satellites.
Speaker 4: SpaceX's big idea is to have thousands of smaller satellites
Speaker 4: orbiting much closer to the Earth, and therefore as the
Speaker 4: satellites whizz around the Earth and talk to each other,
Speaker 4: they can beam data down much quicker.
Speaker 5: Than these other satellites that are much higher up.
Speaker 4: Now, the higher up ones are really great because they
Speaker 4: orbit in a fixed position and so you have a
Speaker 4: reliable stream of data right where you want it. And
Speaker 4: so the problem SpaceX needed to solve was that it
Speaker 4: needed to launch a huge number of satellites to be
Speaker 4: able to compete with this, so that the scale, if
Speaker 4: you will, has started to tip in their favor. I
Speaker 4: do think Max makes a great point about the rollout,
Speaker 4: because there's major questions about how this technology will perform
Speaker 4: on United flights.
Speaker 3: And eric on that point, and with this we need
Speaker 3: to wrap up here, my friend, But you said that
Speaker 3: this starlink service is already being used on several air lines,
Speaker 3: including Hawaiian air How has it held up so far?
Speaker 3: Is it truly superior or even far superior to what
Speaker 3: you'd get on other flights and other carriers.
Speaker 4: I mean, the reports overall are good, but it's SpaceX's
Speaker 4: Starlink is really good at rural and remote locations. So
Speaker 4: over the ocean, right if you think about a ship
Speaker 4: or with its crew sitting in the middle of the Atlantic,
Speaker 4: that works. But as they encroaches closer and closer on
Speaker 4: dense urban areas where there's huge demand and pressure put
Speaker 4: on a single satellite from lots of consumers, that's when
Speaker 4: the service can start to bring it.
Speaker 3: Wasn't there a case a couple of years ago, like
Speaker 3: over Chicago or something, Well, we made it.
Speaker 5: You made it by breaking the news.
Speaker 4: So SpaceX had this big trial and they were with
Speaker 4: Delta and they took a single flight up over Chicago
Speaker 4: and this was a big demonstration flight for starlink.
Speaker 5: A couple of years back. To be fair and starlingkuin
Speaker 5: connect they.
Speaker 4: Couldn't get it to work, and so SpaceX's quick solution
Speaker 4: was to shut down Internet connection to the city of
Speaker 4: Chicago below to all their customers. Then the flight worked,
Speaker 4: they proved it. It was great, big success and so
Speaker 4: and then it was very embarrassing. So that's my point
Speaker 4: is that they struggled with capacity, but it appears that
Speaker 4: they are overcoming those challenges and making inroads with the carriers.
Speaker 4: Question is who's next, right, Can they get Delta, Can
Speaker 4: they get American, Can they get Southwest? Can they expand
Speaker 4: that it appears the momentum feels like it's in their favor.
Speaker 3: All right, good stuff, Eric, We really really appreciate you
Speaker 3: having you on, saying to you as always Max and Dana.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much.
Speaker 5: Eric, Thank you, guys, appreciate it great to be here.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 3: Rayhan Harmans are our senior editor. The idea for this
Speaker 3: very show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples, Handel's engineering,
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