Back to the Starship v3 launch watch/wait today. Yesterday’s multiple holds at T-40 seconds seemed to be due to problems in the launch pad, perhaps the gigantic water based fire suppression system. Or the pressures in fuel lines and pumps – we can’t know until SpaceX figures it out and tells us. So back to hoping for a clean launch today.

In the meantime, how does one reconcile the disgust at founder Musk’s sociopathic behavior and the admiration for his creation, SpaceX? Musk has become the worst kind of political animal imaginable – greedy, amoral, destructive, racist. He basically got Donny Convict elected by tossing about $300M into the 2024 election, thanks to SCOTUS and Citizens United. He then tore down decades of progressive institutions via his weird role in DOGE, an action that arguably has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the developing world, as we see right now with the huge ebola outbreak and no USAID to stop it. He also stole private data on every US citizen, data he’s now using to get even richer. Musk has shown himself to be a shitty human being, a criminal just like Trump.

But then there’s SpaceX, a company that has single-handedly resurrected space travel as an aspirational US dream. NASA was stuck, going nowhere. Then Musk and SpaceX came along and changed the rules for rocketry. More rockets have been launched in the last 3 years than in the previous 50, and that’s 100% due to SpaceX. The Falcon 9 system is an amazing launch workhorse, and Starship is the stuff of science fiction. I just love it.

So how does one reconcile Musk the shitty human with SpaceX his wonderful creation? I suppose there have always been deeply flawed people creating wonderful things, but Musk/SpaceX are extremes. No matter how I try to twist my head around it, these two things can’t be reconciled. One is incredibly bad, and one incredibly good. The cause and effect relationship between the two is hard (impossible?) to explain.

This essay is what happens when you’ve got too much time to think about things…