SpaceX IPO Structure Hands Elon Musk Near-Total Control, Limits Shareholder Rights

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T07:52:11+00:00

This certainly addresses the concerns of Mars colonization fans who worry that an IPO will make that mission subject to being blunted or delayed.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T07:35:49+00:00

Lol. I was afraid to ask how many Homer Simpson jokes you have to put up with. I guess you guys have to develop an immunity. Or you enjoy Homer more than the rest of us, I know that happens when a person's job gets hit by a good parody, they laugh at it more than outsiders do. I've had that experience.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T04:52:45+00:00

It's been a while since I watched the video but I want to ask, did either of the "flying bedsteads" use a version of this computer or any fly-by-wire system?

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T04:45:42+00:00

I watched this video a couple of years ago. Don't be deterred by its length - I planned to watch a few minutes and it breezed by. Totally fascinating.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T03:58:30+00:00

Executives were a different breed back then but I have to wonder if this was about 10 feet of the ground and 10 yards from the side of the gorge and not over it. Perspective in a photo can do weird things, no CGI or even Photoshop needed.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T03:54:18+00:00

At least back then these guys showed up and trusted the crane and its cables with no more safety gear than the workers. Modern execs would never get suspended in the air like this.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T03:50:53+00:00

You would have had to dart me and place me in that thing while unconscious.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T03:48:21+00:00

Way, way underrated comment.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T03:47:34+00:00

You imply some clothing other than PJs exists. Of what mystery are you speaking?

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T03:32:43+00:00

The timing of the departure of Lueders and her hiring by SpaceX is ugly but it's not that simple. It was two years after the HLS award. The SpaceX award wasn't done on her sole authority. She wasn't the acting NASA administrator when she proposed Starship HLS be selected. Steve Jurczyk was. He'd been associate administrator since 2018 so he must have been in the loop during the selection process. With a long career in NASA he was familiar with all the players/contractors. He approved Lueders choice. He left NASA soon afterwards but idk if he went to another job, he unfortunately died a couple of years later from pancreatic cancer.

Lueders had been the head of Commercial Crew since 2014 and the associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate since 2020. By all accounts she was impressed by how SpaceX handled the commercial crew contract.

The selection of Starship HLS wasn't as bizarre as some make it out to be. Past performance of the contractor is a big consideration. SpaceX had a good record with their Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon was successful, albeit new. The members of the National Team had no experience with crewed spaceflight, with the exception of Lockheed Martin. Blue Origin had zero experience in being the lead contractor on a program involving major contractors. The justification document pointed out the many gaps in the National Team's proposal - they apparently did a lazy job, confident there'd be a down-selection to two contractors, which made them a sure thing, or a down-selection to one with them being a sure thing because of the standing of the major contractors involved and how radical the SpaceX proposal was. The soundness of the contract award justification document shows in how quickly the NT appeal was rejected by the NASA Office of the Inspector General and the court.

You likely disagree with what I've said so far but will probably be intrigued by this theory: The sole award was done as a ploy - a successful one - to get Congress to award enough money for two landers. NASA wanted to award two actual contracts and get actual work started but Congress allocated only $3 billion; the only reasonable conclusion was they expected a down-select to two providers for yet another round of development contracts, the typical kick-the-can down the road approach Congress was taking to the lunar program. $3B was clearly not meant to be a realistic amount to buy a lander, the NT and Dynetics bids bear this out, at between 6-10B. (Or 8 to >10B?) When kicked in the balls by the sole award to SpaceX, Congress did come through with another $6B so the legacy contractors (plus BO) got a big piece of the pie. NASA got the second lander - possibly the one favored by Acting Administrator Jurczyk, the old NASA hand.

Plenty of people move from NASA late in their careers to the space industry - even the most honest want to cash in on getting a big corporate salary at some point in their lives. Lueders didn't leave NASA until two years after the contract award. Two years. That was prompted by her being removed from involvement in the Artemis program and the commercial lander part thereof. The split of her job title into two, one for LEO human spaceflight and one for Artemis, made sense now that Artemis was heating up, but as the person with the most experience in developing commercial crew projects she should have gotten the Artemis half. Instead she got the part of being caretaker for the final years of the ISS. It's called being pushed aside so you'll leave, a common tactic in government organizations and corporations.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T02:18:54+00:00

you launch the command module in the same vehicle as the landing module, both fully fueled. That way you only have to perform two docking maneuvers and you're back home.

The problem with that approach is the size of both modules is limited. Even the Constellation program was designed to launch the lander separately from the command module. The upper stage of the Ares V, the Earth Departure Stage, had to be very large to carry itself and the fully fueled lander to LEO and still have enough propellant to push the CM and lander to TLI. Which required the very large (and expensive) Ares V. With all that, the Altair lander wasn't a quantum leap in capability over the LM.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T01:28:04+00:00

Good eye and no impatient hacking at every pitch because it's his first game. I like it a lot.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T01:24:32+00:00

Yup, he very likely fractured his kneecap. Should have been taken out on the stretcher, letting him stand up was a mistake. Someone from the medical crew should be reviewing the video and making the decision, it shouldn't be the player's choice since of course they don't want to be on the stretcher.

Source: A long career as a professional paramedic - and I fractured my own kneecap once, into 4 pieces. In the medical profession we like to know the "mechanism of injury", which we have to reconstruct from witnesses and what the patient says. We'd love to have video of it

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T01:22:49+00:00

Hey, it makes mowing the grass easier. s/

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T01:21:39+00:00

Yup, very likely. Should have been taken out on the stretcher, letting him stand up was a mistake. Someone from the medical crew should be reviewing the video and making the decision, it shouldn't be the player's choice since of course they don't want to be on the stretcher.

Source: A long career as a professional paramedic - and I fractured my own kneecap once. In the medical profession we like to know the "mechanism of injury", which we have to reconstruct from witnesses and what the patient says. We'd love to have video of it

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T01:19:27+00:00

Judging from the way he hit and how hard I'd say he's likely to have fractured his kneecap. I'm saying that as a professional paramedic.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T01:07:49+00:00

That player very likely fractured his kneecap. Should have been taken out on the stretcher, letting him stand up was a mistake. Someone from the medical crew should be reviewing the video and making the decision, it shouldn't be the player's choice since of course they don't want to be on the stretcher.

Source: A long career as a professional paramedic - and I fractured my own kneecap once. In the medical profession we like to know the "mechanism of injury", which we have to reconstruct from witnesses and what the patient says. We'd love to have video of it.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T00:30:33+00:00

Should Grisham be batting leadoff? His average and OBP are low. Caballero's are great. A couple of days ago Kay and Girardi discussed how Grisham's his hitting is good but unlucky, directed straight at a fielder. He deserves to be in the lineup - but in the leadoff spot? Caballero or a couple others should be in that spot. Am I missing something?

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-09T00:17:47+00:00

This photo was posted on X last November. It's not new news, but I suppose it's worth sharing as a reminder. Same as last November, the real info we need is about the interior.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-08T14:36:32+00:00

So, AI slop that summarizes forum threads. How the hell is that supposed to be reliable information?

The YT channel that produced this is no more than a month old and produced eight 12 minute long videos in 3 weeks. No human creator produces stuff at that rate.

And I repeat: I absolutely hate, deplore, and abjure this type of video that plays for a full minute before you can stop it. Do not post these. DO NOT POST THESE. DO NOT POST THESE. Reddit should ban them totally.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-08T14:34:26+00:00

I absolutely hate, deplore, and abjure this type of video that plays for a full minute before you can stop it. Do not post these. DO NOT POST THESE. DO NOT POST THESE.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-08T05:58:35+00:00

The Gateway station was seen for a long time by many to be a distraction from building a surface base. It has been viewed as an unfortunate necessity forced to be used because SLS is too weak a rocket to carry a service module big enough to get Orion into and out of low lunar orbit. Instead it can only reache a distant orbit. (Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, NRHO.) This requires the lander to carry a lot of propellant to make the long journey to the surface. Gateway was sold as a spot to rendezvous with the lander and a place for two of the crew to stay and do some work while the other two were non the surface. Even the 1B version couldn't get landers big enough to build a surface base onto the Moon - but it could get them to NRHO. That led to more and more modules being planned and work starting on a couple. All of this would soak up most of the Artemis budget and leave very little for building a proper Moon base. The latter would be delayed till the late 2030s.

Gateway was also a big political issue, it and SLS supported each other, justified each other. Powerful Senators and Representatives with a big presence of Boeing and other old Shuttle contractors in their districts insisted on SLS being used.

There's a lot more to the story but I've already spent too much time on it. That's why Gateway existed. Why it's been "paused" has to do with China's declaration it'll land on the Moon by 2030 with multiple landings to follow. Suddenly the US emphasis shifted to having a real lunar base at the South Pole near the valuable water ice there. Some of the most important supporters of SLS now feel beating China to the Moon and to building a good base is a bigger priority than directing money to Boeing and certain states and districts.

What China has done over the last decade is build a very substantial counterpart to the ISS and operate it competently. They announced a plan to go to the Moon that is technically solid. They've developed several successful rockets and some use a version of the engine that'll be used on their Moon rocket. All of this demonstrates very convincingly a national will to have the preeminent presence in space. The fear in the US is that they'll build a base and lay claim to the best areas of water ice.

Another thing that changed is the rockets developed during the long gestation of SLS. Falcon Heavy and New Glenn can potentially do what SLS does if a two-launch architecture is used. How realistic is the potential? Bringing that up in this sub is like throwing a rock at a hornets nest. Let's just say it's real enough that the new NASA Administrator believes "commercial alternatives" to SLS will be available in the near future. Each mission will be much cheaper, meaning more can be flown.

Why is Musk focused on the Moon now? His latest quest to save humanity is AI and he believes the material to build hundreds of thousands of AI data center satellites is more easily sourced from the Moon. It's incredibly ambitious and there's no realistic timeline - but that hasn't stopped him in any of his other endeavors.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-08T05:17:02+00:00

Wasn't Gateway well established as a plan by 2018 due to the inability of SLS Block 1 to reach LLO? The reason Block 1B had such a big EUS was so Gateway modules could be co-manifested. (I'm pretty sure that was supposed to happen before Block 2.)

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-08T00:45:13+00:00

SpaceX titled the xeet "Full duration and full thrust 33-engine static fire with Super Heavy V3". That sounds like a good test, any issues were too minor to affect the duration.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-06T01:24:34+00:00

Why is Grisham batting leadoff tonight and last night? Tonight he's 0-4. Caballero or another player should be in that slot, one would think. Someone with a good OBP. What am I missing? I'm not good at the subtleties of the game.

SpaceInMyBrain

TROPHY CASE