Easy, nationalize SpaceX. NASA absorbs operations, continue on.
What a great idea. I hadn’t considered this. There’s no chance it will happen with our crazy reverence of the free market, but a sane country would respond this way.
Then SpaceX is forced to adhere to political considerations and budget priorities. NASA oversight and intensely risk averse culture would not have allowed spacex to build a rocket factory, or risk throwing away prototypes for rapid iteration.
Gwynne Shotwell is doing a pretty good job at SpaceX. She could be CEO once Musk gets ousted. If you look at the snail’s pace NASA has been moving at in crewed flight, I don’t think turning over SpaceX to them would be really helpful.
There isn’t much need for crewed flights though.
Not even the first car tycoon
Coca Cola promoted itself as the true patriotic, German Nazi drink in the Third Reich and was a major sponsor of the olympic games in Berlin. They continued to promote themselves as Führer loving nationalists with swasticas on their ads until the very moment the US government sanctioned Germany. It worked so well most Germans were convinced it was a German product up until the end of the war when American Soldiers turned up with buttloads of that stuff while Germany has been cut off from it for years at that point. Playing both sides worked fabulously for Coke and many other companies so they will keep doing it.
Title contradicts the article body. How has history been unkind? Because Perot lost a contract once? Even though the article says that’s unlikely to happen with SpaceX.
Just ask any business owner from pre-unification Italy.
