1,732 karma · joined February 3, 2019
> Griffin who went from the CIA to become head of NASA and funded the early SpaceX (10x from what Musk himself put in!)
Strawman eh? You pretty much claimed that Griffin funded SpaceX, and not just that, that he invested 10x as much as Musk.
Now you go around editing your comments. Lol.
It is not a strawman to say that what you said is non even nearly close to reality.
What passage in that interview says anything about "In‑Q‑Tel invested in SpaceX" or "CIA funded SpaceX"?
That interview is a NASA oral history of Mike Griffin’s career. It mentions his time at In‑Q‑Tel and later NASA, but it never says In‑Q‑Tel or the CIA funded SpaceX. You’re conflating "this guy once ran a CIA‑linked VC" with "he personally funneled CIA money into SpaceX," which simply isn't true. SpaceX’s early funding is well‑documented as Musk’s own money plus later NASA contracts as a customer, not a CIA equity round.
SpaceX (and Kistler Aerospace, Orbital Sciences etc.) was awarded contracts for commercial transportation to the ISS [1]. NASA’s role was as an anchor customer and partner under a publicly described program to get cargo (and later crew) to ISS via commercial providers. NASA’s commercial cargo program and SpaceX’s contracts are not secret. They were openly competed and publicly announced. That's the opposite of clandestine CIA startup funding.
DoD launch money for SpaceX (EELV/NSSL contracts, etc.) came much later, after Falcon 9 was flying and competing with ULA, and those are again launch service contracts, not "investment".
> Trump admin took this link down off NASA's website but it's archived just before the transition
That interview wasn't mysteriously "scrubbed". The website got updated and you found an old link that wasn't working anymore [2][3]. Not a conspiracy, just garden variety link rot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Orbital_Transportat...
[2] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/griffinmd-1-...
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/history/history-publications-and-resour...
Such a cynical take! Starlink made Golden Dome possible. It is easy to make up conspiracies post-hoc while forgetting that they were ridiculed when they announced it and the "experts" opined that it is impossible to do.
> SpaceX was in fact founded with the architect of SDI
This is highly unfounded speculation. Griffin went to work for "In-Q-Tel" after SpaceX was already founded (as said in the link you cited). There is no evidence I could find that they ever invested in SpaceX.
The existence of cheap launch and cheap satellites allowed the (at the time new) Space Force to pivot from large, expensive monolithic satellites to a "proliferated architecture" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency#Launc...) at a much lower cost.
Why would you be "terrified" of space-based ballistic missile defense? Seems a lot better than ground-based interceptors that have a not-great rate of interception.
This is a super easy way to run linux VMs on Apple Silicon. It can also act as a backend for docker.
If it saves $1T, then why does it require raising taxes?
The federal govt spent about 2.6-2.8 trillion dollars[1] on healthcare in 2025 - including Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, VA/DoD health and federal employee benefits). In what world is that "lack of spending" ?
[1] https://www.pgpf.org/article/healthcare-spending-will-be-one...
Their revenue from Starlink is slated to be bigger than the entire NASA budget this year.
The actions that cause possible bad societal harms from drinking alcohol are indeed banned or heavily penalized. Drinking and Driving. Public Intoxication. Domestic Abuse. Child Endangerment and more.
- https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/aviation/blue-button-helpi...
- https://pilotsupport.avidyne.com/kb/article/50-dfc90-wings-l...
The furthest they did was 8.3 Mbps at 400 million km which is around ~1.38 GiB in transit.
"No-knead" recipes usually involve 20-30 minute cadence of "fold-and-stretch" followed by a rise to allow the gluten to develop naturally without kneading. Usually about four times.
> The dough will rise when it rises, indifferent to your optimization.
Joke's on them! I run my oven until the temperature inside is ~100F - about a minute or so. Then I turn it off and set the dough in there along with some water (for humidity). It rises super fast compared to my kitchen which is ~65F in the winter and the bread is just as flavorful. Definitely not indifferent to my optimization.
When on an IFR flight plan - at least domestically, especially in busy airspaces, the flight plan is mainly sort of a backup in case of lost-comms. You are typically vectored by ATC and your route may or may not be exactly what you filed. For example, in the SoCal area, the "standard" IFR routes can be pretty roundabout going around the approach/departure corridors of the main airports. But, if at any time the area is clear, ATC would typically clear you through a shorter routing.
I am not sure how it works for international routes. I know that for trans-oceanic routing, they typically make position reports over HF radio when over the ocean where there is no ADSB coverage.
There has been a lot of press claiming @SpaceX is raising money at $800B, which is not accurate.
SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors.
Valuation increments are a function of progress with Starship and Starlink and securing global direct-to-cell spectrum that greatly increases our addressable market.
And one other thing that is arguably most significant by far.
While I have great fondness for @NASA, they will constitute less than 5% of our revenue next year. Commercial Starlink is by far our largest contributor to revenue.
Some people have claimed that SpaceX gets “subsidized” by NASA. This is absolutely false.
The SpaceX team won the NASA contracts because we offered the best product at the lowest price. BOTH best product AND lowest cost. With regard to astronaut transport, SpaceX is currently the only option that passes NASA safety standards.
One of them flew six flights successfully, got contract extended further to 14 flights for a total of 4.93 billion. They also flew other paying customers seven times.
In that time, the second one flew once with astronauts, and had so many problems that they ended up coming home on the first guy's spacecraft.
I will let you figure out who is who.
Consistent delivery at all levels indeed.
Weird. I must have been imagining the Falcon 9 launching more mass to orbit this year than the entirety of the rest of the planet. More than all the flights of the Space Shuttle program combined.
It is fair to compare inference to streaming. Both are done by the end user.
It turned out to be an x87 bug where a piece of code was actually computing the wrong answer!. Logically following the code would make you think that the particular failure in question would never happen - and yet it did. That was quite a rabbit-hole to go into to figure out.
Molon Labe. Until then, we will continue to boast, and above your "private" crater-gardens (that we will keep taking pictures of), the stars will belong to us.