The number of titles that follow the format, "Elon Musk wants X" I think are starting to warrant a browser extension that replaces them with "No Mr. Bond Elon Musk wants the World" or something similar.
He didn't notice, and it was amazing.
Now on the flip side it seems that SpaceX is putting their relationship with NASA as a priority. You would think they would want Russia as a client in the future as well but I think that will never happen now.
Plenty more money from pretty much anywhere else in the world to be had in terms of payloads, but in a practical sense I suspect it's a lot easier to launch US-based payloads then ones from overseas - shipping sensitive satellites around the world can't exactly be easy.
While I certainly don't disagree, we're talking about a company who's business is shipping sensitive satellites into orbit, so they're probably better positioned to know how to undertake shipping them round the world than most people!
Well, maybe not on Earth, but definitely on Kerbin.
Russia is flush with cash, and while their economy may contract, they're not exactly doing badly...
Further, what makes you think Putin and his government is unpopular at home? (hint: they aren't)
Regardless, this is about sending things into space which isn't the realm of ordinary citizens, but governments. The Russian government certainly is flush with cash.
The Russian "government" per se won't run out of money, since there is no clear border between public governance and corporate governance anyway. Essentially the state does what the oligarchs tell it to do, and everyone else does what the government tells them to do. If it weren't for the legendary corruption, this might actually be a powerful system...
In Russia there's not only "some poor". Health services are reported to be almost inaccessible without bribes, and people do behave as if a war or catastrophic inflation is coming.
I also think that Russia had a little something to do with the problems the Ukraine was having over the last few years. In a region renowned for corruption it is hard to tell if Janukowitsch and his friends robbed the country blind with or without outside help...
And unhappy people are more likely to say anything than happy people.
I've heard the same thing about the US many times.
I strongly doubt he is interested in being polite to Russian rocket industry.
Elon: I'm here for 3 ICBMs. The price is $21 million, correct?
Russians: No, the price is now $21 million for 1 ICBM. You don't have that kind of money? You can't play with the big boys.
Elon: on the plane ride home How hard can it be to build a rocket?
The Russians also had a salvage tug off the Space Coast leading up to the CR3 resupply mission (it was the most powerful salvage tug in the world at its commissioning). Take that for what its worth.
Because I really want something that replaces, "Full Stack Engineer" with "Knows python AND java-script". Because every time I hear that parse I cringe, 75% of the Linux Stack is C, how is a full stack engineer skating by without knowing it?!