Elon Musk used Twitter to speak SpaceX’s ascent because the world’s strongest area firm. What occurs to Musk’s area ambitions now that he owns Twitter?
Nobody influences spaceflight in the present day greater than Elon Musk. SpaceX dominates the launch market with the Falcon 9, whereas Starlink is changing into a serious, even important, satellite tv for pc broadband supplier. Ready within the wings is Starship, a car that guarantees to additional disrupt the launch market whereas additionally delivering astronauts to the lunar floor for the primary time in additional than half a century.
And but, Musk is extra distracted from area than ever. His consideration, lengthy balanced between SpaceX and electrical car producer Tesla, now appears consumed by his newest acquisition, Twitter. Since taking up the social media firm in a quixotic $44 billion acquisition in October, he has been totally engaged making an attempt to remake — or break — the corporate.
Musk has lengthy been each an influence person of Twitter and some of the highly effective individuals to make use of it. It’s his main advertising channel and a spot the place legions of followers rally behind his lofty ambitions to colonize Mars and cheer his earthy memes.
Twitter is the place Musk is at his juvenile worst, exhibiting a crassness in stark distinction to the seriousness of geopolitical points he wades into, together with a truculence that stokes the flames of a difficult pressure of tribalism.
With hundreds of workers laid off and lots of advertisers alienated within the weeks because the deal closed, some surprise if Twitter can survive Elon Musk. Simply as essential, although, is whether or not Musk, and his imaginative and prescient of a multiplanetary civilization, can survive Twitter.
STARLINK AND UKRAINE
It was by Twitter that Musk facilitated essential Starlink connectivity for Ukraine throughout its struggle with Russia, responding to a tweet from a Ukrainian authorities minister shortly after the invasion started. Starlink terminals quickly began working on the entrance traces, offering important communications.
“They tweeted at Elon and so we turned it on,” recalled SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell in a chat a couple of weeks after the beginning of the struggle, noting the corporate had been in negotiations with the Ukrainian authorities for touchdown rights within the weeks earlier than the struggle began. “That was our permission. That was the letter from the minister. It was a tweet.”
Starlink basically has been reshaping the notion of satellite tv for pc broadband from only a know-how of final resort to at least one that may carry excessive speeds and new capabilities in locations that beforehand had little to no connectivity choices.
Constructing on its early success amongst fastened shopper households, Starlink is now increasing companies for these on the transfer, together with at sea and within the air, the place Musk guarantees web on planes comparable with speeds again at residence for the primary time.
A bit additional out, Musk’s plan to attach Starlink immediately to straightforward smartphones would lengthen his area empire into shopper pockets — all facilitated by the most important satellite tv for pc constellation ever deployed.
Whereas there’s a methods to go to make a enterprise counting on closely sponsored antennas economically sustainable, Starlink’s aggressive enlargement is rewriting the playbook for a low Earth orbit broadband market affected by bankruptcies and failures.
AN ELASTIC LAUNCH MANIFEST
Starlink has had one other impact: making a finely tuned launch system. The present Starlink technology requires SpaceX to launch Starlink satellites at a dizzying tempo to construct out the constellation and meet rising demand for its broadband companies. Launches, in addition to restoration of the Falcon 9 first phases and payload fairings, are actually routine. As of Dec. 1, SpaceX had carried out 54 launches in 2022; in 2002, the 12 months Musk based SpaceX, there have been solely 65 orbital launch makes an attempt worldwide.
SpaceX has demonstrated with this excessive flight cadence that, along with its main clients like NASA and the U.S. House Drive, it might probably squeeze in further clients just by delaying a Starlink launch: an “elastic launch manifest,” within the phrases of 1 business supply. That has turn out to be more and more essential given the expansion of satellite tv for pc constellations and delays within the introduction of recent launch autos just like the Ariane 6, New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur.
That elasticity allowed SpaceX to trip to the rescue when Russia’s broadly condemned invasion of Ukraine took the Soyuz off the launch market, leading to a sequence of surprising launch offers for SpaceX. Days after it terminated its Soyuz launch contract in March, OneWeb — a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink — introduced it might launch a few of its remaining satellites on three Falcon 9 rockets. Whereas OneWeb additionally purchased two launches of India’s GSLV, it had few different choices if it wished to attenuate the delay in launching satellites that had been scheduled to launch this 12 months on Soyuz.
OneWeb just isn’t the one uncommon buyer being rescued by SpaceX. In October, the European House Company introduced it might launch two missions, the Euclid astrophysics mission and Hera asteroid mission, on Falcon 9. Euclid was initially slated to fly on Soyuz, whereas Hera was a sufferer of continued Ariane 6 delays that might have stored it from launching in 2024 as deliberate.
Two months earlier, Northrop Grumman mentioned it might purchase not less than three Falcon 9 launches of Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which has lengthy competed with SpaceX’s Dragon to service the Worldwide House Station. These launches will function a stopgap between the retirement of the present model of its Antares rocket, with a Ukrainian first stage and Russian engine, and the introduction of a brand new model developed with Firefly Aerospace.
DOUBLED-EDGED NATURE
However Ukraine additionally underlines how Musk just isn’t at all times the benevolent savior his followers make him out to be.
The billionaire threatened to chop off the nation’s Starlink lifeline after Ukrainian officers condemned him for placing ahead a peace plan, by way of Twitter, that included ceding territory to their invader. Musk has additionally made conflicting statements about his willingness to proceed funding some Starlink companies in Ukraine, even whereas in negotiations to have the Pentagon assist it.
Starlink has come below fireplace from astronomers, environmentalists and different satellite tv for pc operators over the sprawling constellation’s affect on the evening sky and its potential to create hazardous area junk. Whereas SpaceX has taken steps to deal with these area sustainability considerations, some stay unconvinced, significantly as SpaceX proposes to develop the constellation from the roughly 3,000 in the present day to greater than 30,000.
Extra satellites exacerbate the constellation’s potential for hurt, however in addition they come amid query marks over the speeds Starlink could be able to with out an improve because the community will get more and more congested.
In August, Starlink was denied practically $900 million in rural broadband subsidies from the FCC after failing to point out it might ship the companies it promised practically 643,000 properties and companies in the US. Whereas the FCC mentioned Starlink has actual promise, the regulator made some extent of not subsidizing know-how that wants extra growth to rise up to hurry. SpaceX is interesting the choice.
Musk routinely butts heads with the Securities and Change Fee, the U.S. monetary regulator, which fined him $20 million in 2018 for erroneously tweeting he had the funding to take his electrical automobile maker Tesla non-public for $420 a share.
Musk has additionally sparred with the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses SpaceX’s launches. The kerfuffles have ranged from complaints in regards to the prolonged environmental evaluate for the corporate’s Boca Chica, Texas, launch web site to performing a suborbital take a look at flight of Starship there in December 2020 in violation of the phrases of its launch license. The FAA let SpaceX off after a short investigation.
SpaceX is now going through scrutiny from one more company. Eight former SpaceX workers filed complaints with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board Nov. 16 alleging that they had been illegally fired by the corporate in June for organizing actions protected below federal regulation.
These actions embrace circulating an open letter throughout the firm calling on SpaceX to formally distance itself from public feedback — together with tweets — by Musk. “As our CEO and most outstanding spokesperson, Elon is seen because the face of SpaceX—each Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public assertion by the corporate,” they wrote.
Musk is no longer only a controversial Twitter person, but additionally a controversial Twitter proprietor and chief government. As he followers the firestorm in his efforts to remake that firm, each hour spent there’s an hour much less that could possibly be spent at SpaceX, the place he typically had a hands-on presence, significantly with Starship growth in Boca Chica. Musk’s non-public aircraft final visited the Brownsville, Texas, airport closest to Boca Chica in mid-October, earlier than the Twitter deal closed, based on a service — a Twitter account, in fact — that tracks the aircraft’s flights.
In late November, one particular person tweeted at Musk a meme exhibiting an individual, labeled Musk, lavishing consideration on one baby in a pool — Twitter — whereas the opposite, Tesla, is ignored and struggles to remain afloat. Beneath them is a skeleton on the backside of the ocean, labeled “Mars mission.”
“Mars plans are nonetheless transferring ahead,” Musk responded. Lots of his supporters little question consider him, however others have motive to surprise if his multiplanetary imaginative and prescient is now a bit blurry.
This text initially appeared within the December 2022 problem of SpaceNews journal.
