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NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission

(www.cnn.com)
404 points voxleone | 32 comments | 21 Oct 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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heisgone ◴[21 Oct 25 18:44 UTC] No.45659875[source]▶
I can imagine SpaceX choosing to self-finance a mission to the moon and beat NASA at it.
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ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 ◴[21 Oct 25 18:50 UTC] No.45659951[source]▶
> I can imagine

That probably does require some imagination. Starting with any incentive to do so.

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1. testing22321 ◴[21 Oct 25 19:06 UTC] No.45660186[source]▶
Elon just said starship will do the entire moon mission:

“Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars

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2. hermitcrab ◴[21 Oct 25 19:11 UTC] No.45660262[source]▶
And he is super well known for making accurate predictions of the future.
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3. dylan604 ◴[21 Oct 25 19:17 UTC] No.45660338[source]▶
>To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars

To occupy it. Just look at Musk's t-shirt. Isn't the entire point of SpaceX to go to Mars? Everything else they do is just steps in achieving the occupation of Mars.

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4. testing22321 ◴[21 Oct 25 19:26 UTC] No.45660461[source]▶
“At SpaceX we specialize in making the impossible merely late”

My comment wasn’t putting any faith in the suggestion spacex will, merely saying Elon thinks they will.

5. BoredPositron ◴[21 Oct 25 19:26 UTC] No.45660467[source]▶
The stars are weeping. They feel the monumental, scraping drag an agonizing, slow motion relocation of the argument's fundamental structure across the cold, unfeeling expanse. His will, that perfect, hideous, unending will, is a perverse, dark energy holding the cosmos in a state of eternal, frustrating unease. Every starship, feels the sheer weight of the hypocrisy, the constant erosion of reason. Look out into the black: those tiny, insignificant flickers of light are not distant suns. They are the spectral reflections off his newly polished, infinitely relocated goalposts. They are always waiting.
6. jbmchuck ◴[21 Oct 25 19:26 UTC] No.45660468[source]▶
He's also said we'd have humans on Mars in 2022...
7. lucketone ◴[21 Oct 25 19:53 UTC] No.45660844[source]▶
People believing that helps to keep stock prices and Mr Elon high.
8. coldpie ◴[21 Oct 25 19:55 UTC] No.45660867[source]▶
> Isn't the entire point of SpaceX to go to Mars?

What? No, it is to concentrate public wealth into the hands of one man.

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9. ◴[21 Oct 25 19:56 UTC] No.45660883[source]▶
10. starik36 ◴[21 Oct 25 20:04 UTC] No.45660979[source]▶
Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.
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11. rurp ◴[21 Oct 25 20:06 UTC] No.45660999[source]▶
The incentive to talk about going to Mars is that it's great propaganda for nerds. It gets people interested in the company and willing to work hard for below market pay. Actually going to Mars doesn't make any sense in the foreseeable future. The idea that we're going to setup a colony on the planet in a few years is a fun fantasy, not a serious plan.
12. Levitating ◴[21 Oct 25 20:11 UTC] No.45661048[source]▶
I do mark his words. He also said he would revolutionize travel in LA (by reinventing the metro). He also said rocket travel would replace air travel. He also said we'd have a martian colony by now.

There's a website dedicated to the empty promises Elon has made. Can't find it though, anyone remember?

Edit: https://elonmusk.today/

13. bdangubic ◴[21 Oct 25 20:12 UTC] No.45661061[source]▶
if I had a dollar for every time Elon said mark my words and nothing was “marked” I’d be richer than him
14. Treegarden ◴[21 Oct 25 20:13 UTC] No.45661069{3}[source]▶
The tone of voice suggests you dislike Musk, but I will still answer in good faith. From what I can see from the outside, he has consistently for many years stated the same goals and worked on them. Any or most financial gains he made, he invested into his companies which work on accomplishing those goals (for example, going to Mars). The most notable example was investing his PayPal money into Tesla and SpaceX when they both were at risk of going out. He also has a reputation for working a lot, though it may be exaggerated, but he looks fairly unhealthy so maybe not too far off. Compared to other super rich people, he seems to spend less time in lavish ways, for example on yachts or similar. He probably still spends more money than we can imagine on unnecessary things, but on the spectrum of rich people he doesn't seem to be the most frivolous. Finally, he has said on Twitter that he doesn't care about money but needs resources for his goals, for example going to Mars. And after everything I’ve seen and the examples listed, it doesn’t seem totally implausible that he means it.
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15. Levitating ◴[21 Oct 25 20:14 UTC] No.45661089{3}[source]▶
What about hyperloop, martian colonization, or rocket replacing airplanes?

Here's a list; https://elonmusk.today/

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16. coldpie ◴[21 Oct 25 20:21 UTC] No.45661180{4}[source]▶
And all it took was ending public science funding and trust in public health and regulatory oversight and destroying the legislative and judiciary branches. Crazy how all the things it takes to get to Mars are also the same things that make him, personally, wealthier and more powerful.
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17. reliabilityguy ◴[21 Oct 25 20:26 UTC] No.45661237[source]▶
So far his spacex track record is quite impressive
18. Treegarden ◴[21 Oct 25 20:31 UTC] No.45661295{5}[source]▶
Well, let’s assume you’re correct about all that. To me, it seems he was already quite rich before doing all the Trump-related things you mentioned. Those might have made him richer, but I’d suspect they didn’t move the needle much compared to his real profit centers (probably Starlink and Tesla). If anything, I’d argue those actions made him poorer by further damaging his reputation. And any “power grab” motives he may have had likely evaporated after his fallout with Trump. One current example is exactly what sparked this thread: the NASA Chief seemingly trying to impress Trump by attacking SpaceX.
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19. reliabilityguy ◴[21 Oct 25 20:32 UTC] No.45661313{3}[source]▶
No one forces anyone to buy Teslas stock to make the price high. If tomorrow Tesla goes bust, Elon’s 400B+ of “wealth” goes bust as well.
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20. IncreasePosts ◴[21 Oct 25 20:39 UTC] No.45661389{4}[source]▶
I wonder if there is something you can do with $500B but not with the $200B or so he has from SpaceX?
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21. myko ◴[21 Oct 25 20:44 UTC] No.45661460{3}[source]▶
We're still waiting on the self driving vehicles. His promise was coast to coast on its own: https://electrek.co/2025/09/21/tesla-influencers-tried-elon-...

by 2017!

22. dylan604 ◴[21 Oct 25 20:49 UTC] No.45661516{6}[source]▶
The best theory into why Musk was so gung-ho about DOGE was specifically to shut down any government agency that was out to keep him from continuing to increase his wealth. By that measurement, he was in charge of the most successful government agency. Whether or not that had any positive/negative affect for Trump was merely an irrelevant by product of the actual mission.
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23. reliabilityguy ◴[21 Oct 25 21:04 UTC] No.45661690{5}[source]▶
He does not have $200B in cash. It’s all stock — unrealized gains. I am not even sure you can convert it to cash without reducing the value itself. Also, AFAIK, spacex is not publicly traded, where does the $200B figure come from?

To be honest I don’t understand this argument of “no one can’t spend billions in a lifetime so no one should have billions at all”. Why do we set a limit on billions? Why do we use the idea of “can’t spend in a lifetime”?

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24. nitwit005 ◴[21 Oct 25 21:32 UTC] No.45661990[source]▶
Look into the history of Elon's promises around Mars. While I wish his promises meant something, they do not.
25. nitwit005 ◴[21 Oct 25 21:39 UTC] No.45662059{4}[source]▶
It's truly, very difficult, to believe the man cares more about the mission of his companies than extracting wealth from them: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

Most CEOs presumably do want their companies to succeed and do good things in the abstract, but a lot of them would happily have them fail if it made them a huge pile of cash.

26. IncreasePosts ◴[21 Oct 25 22:13 UTC] No.45662402{6}[source]▶
SpaceX isn't public, but has raised money at a $400+B valuation and Musk owns 42% of that.

I have no argument about limiting anyone's money. I'm just wondering if there is a (real, useful) feat he can pull off now with $500B, but that he couldn't do with a mere $200B.

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27. reaperducer ◴[21 Oct 25 22:50 UTC] No.45662722{3}[source]▶
Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen.

"I see a path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months." — 11/27/2022

28. reliabilityguy ◴[22 Oct 25 00:32 UTC] No.45663594{7}[source]▶
> SpaceX isn't public, but has raised money at a $400+B valuation and Musk owns 42% of that.

The company raised money? I could not find any article that states that, only some rumors about the intent to do so.

Regardless, when company raises money its company's money, not Elon's.

I would assume that aggressive scaling of rocket building capabilities would require capital, but I have no idea what is the figure needed for that.

29. ◴[22 Oct 25 13:21 UTC] No.45668720{4}[source]▶
30. philipallstar ◴[22 Oct 25 13:21 UTC] No.45668729{4}[source]▶
Those don't even seem later than predicted yet.
31. philipallstar ◴[22 Oct 25 13:23 UTC] No.45668758{7}[source]▶
That's not the best theory. He thinks government was too big, and wanted to cut waste. Trump, it turns out, wanted to have a "big beautiful bill" and Musk strongly opposed that, saying any bill that's big isn't beautiful. So he got moved off DOGE by Trump.

SpaceX has always complied with the regulations and timings needed by regulatory bodies. This isn't a thing.

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32. dylan604 ◴[23 Oct 25 00:27 UTC] No.45676846{8}[source]▶
Ge got moved off of DOGE because his 120 days were up. It was never a permanent gig for Musk. Those gigs require congressional approval.