space

Starship has been Elon Musk's baby for 12 years now, and, he's been launching various versions of it for six years or so. It's never worked worth a damn, and, it probably never will. In the last two years he's launched a "final version" of Starship four times, and, it's never had a fully successful mission, despite the astonishing cost of a billion dollars per launch for a rocket that cannot get beyond lower earth orbit.

Nevertheless, however useless this pile of garbage is, it is, as they say, "Elon's money", so he can waste it as he sees fit. Problem is, a rocket this huge, when it explodes, has the effect of a tactical nuclear weapon on the immediate environment. And, now, for the fifth mission, Elon Musk wants to land his Starship on land! And, quite naturally, the FAA is seeing red over this. The cannot afford to overlook the possibility, or indeed, the probability, of a truly massive environmental catastrophe, and quite possibly many deaths, on their watch.

Of course, SpaceX is crying foul over a delay of several months on the award of the license, and, of course, SpaceX is insisting that the FAA license will, inevitably be granted at the end of November. Actually, this is rather unlikely, unless SpaceX modifies the mission's stated objective, to make the landing on sea, instead of land. Some of the more reasonable supporters of SpaceX are accepting this, acknowledging that it must be proven that landings can be accomplished safely, consistently, outside of a land based areas which could suffer catastrophic damage if anything goes wrong. And, the problem with trying to land on the sea, is that the rocket is too large to be accommodated by any normal sea-borne vessel. So, exactly how SpaceX and Elon Musk can proceed is unclear at this point in time, and, precisely how they can proceed with the mission is very much up in the air.

Fact is, the Starship seems to have taken over from Controlled Nuclear Fusion as the Garbage Technology you can make the most money investing in. It can't work, it won't work, it won't ever work, but, the mere fact that people are willing to bet their money on it working, means you can make money investing in it. Unfortunately, the entire world Stock Market works on this principle, garbage technologies that are effectively marketed so that engineers, scientists and businessmen can make their money lying for a living. And, this may explain why Russia and China, which largely exist outside of the entire Western disinformation machine, are able to wipe the floor with the West militarily, despite our on paper claims of massive economic and military technological superiority. Fact is, the West is running on disinformation, and very little else. Maybe that's why Elon Musk is so very successful!