Off-Nominal - 228 - The SpaceX Reverse Mortgage

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Mars is dead! Long live the Moon! Jake and Anthony kick around the recent flurry of SpaceX news—the IPO, data centers, and a focus on the Moon.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 228 - The SpaceX Reverse Mortgage - YouTubeSpaceX acquires xAI, plans to launch a massive satellite constellation to power it - Ars TechnicaWhy would Elon Musk pivot from Mars to the Moon all of a sudden? - Ars TechnicaSpaceX Sets $800 Billion Valuation, Confirms 2026 IPO Plans - BloombergSpaceX-xAI Deal Blurs Musk’s Once-Clear Space Exploration Mission - BloombergHere's why Blue Origin just ended its suborbital space tourism program - Ars TechnicaFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hey, buddy. I was running late because I forgot I put my beer out the window in the snow to cool down before this, and then I had to go out the window and get the beer. Yeah, our lives are different, yeah. Snow should be melted this week, I think. That's nice. I had to turn the air conditioner back on today.

We're out of the cold snap, so that's good. Ooh, toasty. Perfect for the Winter Olympics. Perfect, yeah. There you go. Team USA. Not going, the Lava of your game, not going as great, as I would hope. So, yeah, look at you.

What do you got? You got a mead for us today? No, no. I got this fun little bottle here. Look at this. Habali, IPA, or as they say, Mexico, Kippa. Is that like a Habalina? I don't know.

I think this is the brand, Abalee. But the little bottle is cute and it's got a pig on it. So, you know. Is it a pig or a warthog? or a boar or a boarhog or a hovalina it's it's one to one feral hogs what is a ward hogs anyone in the chat know where what is a pig boar wardhog what is any of these what are any of these things and since i made a disparaging comment about irish cuisine i thought i'd put it in a little glass here so thank you 25% of me thanks you yeah i was like it's this little cup my mother's a little tiny one

Yeah, so it's the little bottle. Look at that. Perfect, right? That's so funny. But when you held it up, I thought it was normal size. I may have broken an Irish law by doing this, but we'll see. Can you split the G still? That one's a much smaller sip to split the G then.

Warthog's like Puma. That's what I was thinking. I was thinking of Pumba from the Lion King for the record. I'm like Pumba. I thought for a second you were saying Warthog is like Puma, which is like, oh, it's just another name for, for some other animal. A mountain lion's the same thing.

Well, that's what I'm wondering. Is a boar and a warthogger? Those are the same thing. It might be. Not worth discussing. These are a resident. Taxologist for taxonomist? Taxonomist, yes.

Taxologist. Taxologist. That's different. That's coming up. That's in a couple weeks. I also have an EPA. I have a graffiti highway trogues. I've had these before.

They're delicious. Nice. I was going to try to segue from highways being graffiti to what happened this week on the moon to Mars front, but I can't figure it out. Building the graffiti highway to the moon. That's what we're doing. The graffiti highway to space. Yeah. Yeah.

We're here, man. We got no more Artemis 2 to talk for several weeks still on my directive. Not going great. We're still not talking about Artemis 2. I don't know. I feel like it was just a lot to SpaceX to digest. And we keep, I don't know, we keep, you and I have just not been able to like connect on this and spend time like coming through it. So I was like, we're not booking a guest this week. We're just going to put it all on the table and talk. So what and how expansive are we getting? Are we going from data centers to the moon versus Mars thing? I think you cannot talk about any of them in isolation. I think it's related. I'm here for that. I'm here for that. Yeah. I like that you have a little bit of like a framework for this show. Yeah. I do. I do. I Yeah. So I was thinking about it and thinking about it and watching our Discord discussion because the people that hang out there always have interesting things to say.

And if you want to join them, of course. Offnom.com slash Discord. Five bucks a month. You can join in. If you do, you can listen to the pre-show where today we discussed which sports in the Winter Olympics we would partake in. Yes, yes. What else?

There was something else funny that we talked about. We talked about Tim's van that's for sale. That's for sale. His van, $5,000. $5,000. And then we talked about how bad Irish food is. Right, which I vehemently disagree with, but we'll get, yeah, we'll get someone on the show to talk about that soon. You fervently defended Irish food with no supporting evidence, which is.

It wasn't enough time because I got in my Columbus Day take, and that was a whole different thing. So you want that kind of nonsense. Pre-show. As you can tell, the pre-show is a lot of fun. Wide-ranging. Wide-ranging. We never scripted it. Okay.

So I was going to say, I've read the news, listen to our fans, and I've been building some ideas. And I'm conflicted on all this news, and I came up with four takes that range from like very positive to very negative. Okay. And these aren't academic. These are all takes that I actually have, and they coexist in a weird.

Okay, these are your takes, not like generic takes that we got to figure out. These are Jake's thoughts on space. I actually believe in, yes. Okay. And so I thought we would go through them and then you can just say. You have like a presentation? It feels like you should have like a keynote prepared for this.

Like Jake's takes. No, no. Okay. I wrote them down in an Apple Notes file. Okay. Which is about as much prep as often on the whole deserves. That's a lot of homework. So we'll go through them and then you can, you can agree or disagree.

And then countering. Are we going one at a time or are you going to unveil all four? what do you think? I don't know how they flow. You tell me. I think one at the time is good because I don't know what's coming. Yeah.

Yeah, let's do one at time. Okay. For the record, I only found out about this framework less than an hour ago. So I have, like,

I don't, I have no idea what's coming. The, the bit with our show is that we pretend like we don't do any work or prep for it. And then the, the underlying secret to that

is that it's true. Yeah. But then occasionally one of us does. And we're like, oh, look at that. A show came my way. Someone did some work.

Okay, so let's start with the good news. Wait, on that note real quick, I have some long lead shows in development for this show in particular. And there's somebody that may or may not listen to the show anymore who was a past guest that I coordinated a little bit with this. And I haven't talked to them in a while. And this is my plea in this format that if that's, if you are a person who may or may not have received packages with my name on it at your house, please reach out. because I was purchasing things internationally that I could only ship to the country of origin to then try to get mailed to me to do a show. And we haven't figured this out yet.

So if you are that individual, please reach out. This is a very cryptic. No, it's not cryptic. I want to surprise you with this if it works, but I don't know that. Okay. All right. Okay. If I told you the country, you would know who it is.

That's the problem. Okay. All right. All right. I was like, okay, so good news. Let's start there. This is my most positive take. Okay, I'm the news that we're talking about, like I said, not in isolation.

So we're going to cover the SpaceX IPO. We're going to cover the acquisition of XAI. And with that, Twitter, we're going to talk about the pivot to the moon. I'm doing pivot in airports here. You'll see. Is that it? There's one more. I thought there was one more.

No, that's about it, right? Those three pieces. I think those are the, what are there's SpaceX news? I might, just Starship Development. Is that part of it? Like a little bit, yeah. Okay. We haven't had a, we haven't had a news with that really.

No, no. No. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so my best take on this is that this is that this is good because they've finally, like, come to, like, their senses that, you can't just like leapfrog straight to Mars and then it works and are actually going to do interesting things at the moon and that's like achievable and fits within SpaceX's like iterative cadence capabilities are going to do it fast they've got international support they've got commercial

support it's going to happen sooner and that's going to like it's like our best chance to get lots of really good long-term technology development out of SpaceX is to have them actually seriously considered the moon. That's my first day. We have talked about many times the iteration speed difference and how it never tracked right with the rest of SpaceX's methodology. And he finally said it aloud. I don't actually said that, which was like, it's been a big two weeks for head honcho is finally admitting a thing that we've all been saying for a long time. Because NASA, both the administrator, which was not a surprise, but then the managers of the space launch system said,

yeah, it's really low flight rate and hard to fuel. This fucking sucks to fly this every four years, man. Let me tell you what. So I would agree with that, that it's been a big time for admitting the thing that many of us had thought. But the iteration cadence thing was always an aspect that we got, and we got down different rabbit holes.

Like, how would you even fly payloads with Starship to Europa if you got to turn around and get this thing back to actually be reused that's a little bit in conflict? there's been versions of this where we you know notice this discrepancy it does though you know there's a part of me that that thought with SpaceX where they are in the life cycle of companies like the life cycle of a company right they still hadn't given up on the vision of Starship as a fully reusable vehicle and they still hadn't given up on the vision of like Mars is why

we're here we're painting murals on buildings we're putting up you know we have the Occupy Mars shirt, we have all this stuff. And those were the two anchoring elements that if they bail on both of them, I'm concerned. If they bailed on one of them, I'm maybe not. You know, if they said, we're going to hold off on full reuse of the Starship Upper Stage because we have the world's largest first stage that can be caught by a tower and we could fly this thing over and over again. And we're going to do it by way of expendable upper stages to send huge payloads to Mars. I'd be like, that fits. Make a big Falcon 9, yeah. Yeah. And if they said in this case, we're still staying on the reusable path,

but we're doing the near-term thing. That also fits. If they bail on both, I would be more concerned about the longevity of the company. I still feel a little weird that, I mean, my criticism, I've said it on this show. I said it last week with Lauren Grush on Miko, that how many decades the SpaceX have to exist

before they get the appropriate amount of shit for not have sent any of their own hardware to Mars? Because they're pushing three decades at this point, and everybody out there on the Internet is given blue origin shit for never making orbit until last year. And SpaceX is almost 30 years in and has never sent a piece of metal of their own design to Mars.

I'm not talking about Hera and things that have went by Mars or whatever. I'm talking about you have more satellites than anyone's ever flown. You've got more rockets than anyone's ever flying. And none of those have been aimed at Martian orbit yet. Or the surface, for that matter.

Yeah. So I guess this sort of absolves into that, right? It's like, well, we're actually moon-focused now. So now it makes sense that we're not doing that, right? The only other thing that rubbed me the wrong way is that, uh, yeah,

every other time that, that SpaceX and Elon Musk have changed their mind about a thing, they just embrace the fact that they've changed their mind. And in this case, it was worded in a way of like, you were stupid if you didn't realize this, that we've already changed our mind on it. It's like,

yeah, you were six months ago, you were not on this horse and now you are. And that's cool if you want to embrace that. But don't try to make it seem like, oh, obviously we've worked on this forever. Like, this is, obviously when our CEO said the moon is a distraction

within the last 12 months it was just jokes you're just josh and you you were dumb to believe that but I do think you're right that this is a positive step towards even if you believe in the other things that SpaceX wants to do because they still said yeah Mars and Mars Mars but I do think

there's a positive step to get there on a more achievable thing and very very Elon Musk to set the bar really high and come in somewhere lower and still be a massive success, right? SpaceX makes, what do they say? They take an impossible make it late. It's like they take the Mars mission and turn it into a move's mission.

Yeah, exactly, exactly right. Yeah, even if you miss, you'll be among the stars. It's like aim for Mars, even if you miss, maybe you'll get to the moon. It's like, all right, still good. That's fucking brutal. No, I just think like the, if you compare two alternative realities,

one where they do what they just did and switch to the moon and one where they like stuck to their guns and just like kept focusing on Mars. I think that at the end of like 10 years from now, the first one does better. There's like more results. There's more tangible results you have. They're probably going to have,

you know, much more mission experience, much more flight experience in like deep space. They're going to have, Starship will have more opportunities to do stuff and be important and be a part of things, you know, that aren't just putting up whatever satellite.

That's kind of mind. Do you think there's any subplot to this, though, that is... I think SpaceX has been more susceptible to the challenge of Blue Origin over the years than they will let on. In that... Yes. The, if I remember correctly, the diameter change of Starship and the stainless steel change. Some of those big changes in the architecture of Starship occurred when Blue Origin announced, scaled up, or got close to something with New Glenn. And then this happens at the time when boy, howdy, are they building some momentum and they've got

landers ready to go to the moon? Yeah. So I don't want to discount that. I think definitely. I think that's fair. And especially just in terms of like capturing the moment, right? Because if if the moon really is a moment, like for in a moment right now where the moon is actually achievable and it's like it's bigger than one person or one organization, like it's,

it's governments and companies and public goodwill. Like if it's in a moment where that's achievable, like Blue Origin is obviously organizationally centered around taking advantage of it. And so you kind of have to be as well. And if they're successful with it, that builds them up even more. And it makes them more of a viable competitor slash replacement. And that threatens everything else that SpaceX is about. Yeah.

If Blue Origin is dropping down the Artemis Moon Base while SpaceX is sending one starship to Mars every 26 months to see, breaks this time like that's not it's not going to be a good look right that little that little vignette might be the only thing that you need to say to convince me that you're right yeah it would be it'd be tough yeah you could you could make your point in a Sora video Jake soar is over the gimmick's done done I haven't opened it in weeks yeah no I'm not I think I that's why I overdosed on it that one weekend because I knew it's gonna burn bright and you're like this is going to be like that other app where It's like it's a total like fad vibe thing. Everyone has the blast with it for three weeks and then it's done.

And I'm like, you couldn't have been more right. It's over. I can tell. I can sell, man. Yeah. Jeez. All right.

All right. Well, that was the only positive one. Oh, no. Let's keep. Oh, they're going to get worse.

They're going to get successively worse here. This one is only a little bit cynical. The pivot to the moon, the XAI acquisition. this filing for one million satellites. All this stuff is fluff. It's just glitz and glam as they gear up for the IPO. I don't even take it seriously.

This is just, this is market manipulation. They're just queuing it up so that people get excited and see a lot of upswing and that's going to drive up the IPO price. You're saying even the pivot to the moon that you just told me was the good idea because it was the sensible strategy was part of the fluff? Yeah. Okay. I like it.

I'm complicated, that. I love being able to hold multiple thoughts in our head at the same time. Such as somehow you like good food and then you think Irish food is bad. So we all have levels. So are you saying that somehow the moon, explain the moon part of this to me, that you think the Mars vision is too far out there for typical investments to be okay with? Yeah, I think for the retail investor, Mars is not a good sell. I think that Elon...

I don't think the moon's a good sell either, to be honest. It's a better sell, though, right? And if you're trying to balance, like, I got to make money off this IPO and I want to actually accomplish some of my goals, the moon is like a really good compromise, right? So with, like, individual private investors where, like, Elon can sit down in a room with them and go, like, this is what I'm thinking and I need your money and this is why. you can, you know, more easily put it out. But the fucking SpaceX share price, man, it's going to be a gong show.

It's going to be just, it's going to be a nightmare. Like every time it's going to go like this with every goddamn tweet and every crash and every, I guess it's going to be, it's going to be chaos. And have someone like buy into that. Like, it's, you can be like, we're going to build a city on Mars that you will never see because you're going to be dead by then. And you're like, I think I'll buy HP actually. I'm not a financial professional, yada yada, disclaimer, disclaimer, said the same thing with Lauren of Bloomberg last week on the show.

I cannot figure out how much a SpaceX stock shall be because I cannot come up with a number that I think is too high. They are completely invaluable, a complete outlier in the market. They've broken so many different industries, and they show no sign of actually stopping in any of those regards. And so I cannot put a cap on it. Well, the good thing, Anthony, is that as soon as the IPO, you will have your dollar figure. That's what I'm saying, though, Jake. I'm like, you name a price, I'll buy one. Like, I cannot.

And then the next day, I'll probably buy it as well. And like, yeah, maybe. Until, yeah, are your other takes, I feel like I have a sense that your other takes might be related and I should hear all four before I dissect. Maybe, maybe. No, are they not? Can I talk about some of them? of this, some of this, uh, IPO nonsense? Yeah, go for it.

Okay. I'll jump in if we need to, if we need to corral the content. Well, I might have more data center. Do you have data center takes? Just read them off. Read off the other time. Not, not deep. Okay.

So the next one is that this, uh, merger especially and, yeah, mostly the merger. And the, and the pivot to data centers and all these new satellites and stuff. It exposes SpaceX to a lot of extra risk that they didn't have before. And it's a hugely capital-intensive business that's going to soak us. All this extra money they're going to make with an IPO or whatever is going to get swallowed up by this enormous elephant in the room, which is 1 million data centers in space. And all of that's going to distract or move away, move SpaceX away from development of technologies and indefinitely. is that you and I care about. Our space sides care about.

I was going to say, yeah, I was going to say, bump the brakes on that last part a little bit. We are multidisciplinary, but... Yeah. Was that take three or four, or three and four? That's three. That's three. Okay. Hit me with four. I need the whole package here, Jake,

because you're two-layered. You're throwing me for a loop on all of these. Twist and turns. I can't take it. I can't take it. All right, the last one is the worst one. It's my most negative take. Okay.

IPO is the beginning of the end for SpaceX as a visionary company. They're going to like ride the momentum what they have. You know, they'll continue to be the best space company and they'll ride that momentum. And their outlook's going to move near and near a term. It's not going to be Mars. It's going to be moon. And then it's going to be next year and then it's going to be next quarter. It's going to like shrink in.

And, you know, investors are going to have more say as they bring them on. Elon's not getting any younger. One day he's going to not be a part of SpaceX one way or another. You can fill in the blank for how you think that will happen. But one day it will be true that he is not there. And at that point, the prices are going to rise up. They'll calcify as another big prime. And it's game over.

I can't disagree at all with that day. It's the only thing I've been thinking about since the IPO became real. And I had been resting on my like, oh, the IPO thing will never happen. It'll never happen. And then November to December, everything accelerated. and I have not been able to shake that vibe. And there's like, I'm glad I heard all these because they think three and four are more related than you'd think.

SpaceX taking on all that risk of these other endeavors. I don't think the data center thing is really part of that, and I'll explain more on that in a second, but I've joked that, remember when Starlink was coming out, I was joking that, like, do you really want to be an ISP? Like, everyone hates their ISP. You want to have a customer support line that people hate calling into, and then they try to cancel and they try to...

I'm an ISP customer of SpaceX, and I'm a little bit mad at them because they keep fucking change the things, and they made it worse. It's in shittifying already. It's already happening, you know, so... So you're going to dilute the brand value that you have in that way, and people are going to call to cancel and they're going to have to be, well, do you want to cancel or what will give you half off your bill if you stay with us another month? And it's going to take 30 minutes to cancel your thing. That's going to happen at some point. want to be that. Okay. Now do you want to also be a social network? The other company type that everyone hates, no one's happy with a social network. Even the people that like any given social

network hate different parts of it. And they think the moderation sucks. And this feature's bad. And they remove the APIs for that thing. And no one ever is perfectly happy with a social network. Yeah. And the funny thing about that is like the only worst thing that could have done was to buy true social. Like there's, there would have been so much better out if they just invented a new one. Like they, but they bought something with so much baggage and so much. political weirdness. Yeah. Like, the next thing they're going to do is by a health insurance company, so they have

the triumvirate of most hated organizations in America. And then, so, another aspect to this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which would also be funny as the Tesla guy. The murky part is, if you believed the comments up until now, that Starlink and its revenue generation was the enabling force. of having enough money to do the Mars thing. And then you've watched Starlink's growth.

It was hard to argue that because they're making a NASA a year in revenue. And you're like, well, clearly, this is, you've reached space agency scale of revenue and whatever amount of profit that Quilty Space can figure out and tell us all. That seemed to be, like, them achieving escape velocity. I think we've talked about that on the show. This is them fully separating from being dependent on what NASA and space policy decisions ever being made. And now it's like,

okay, so we still are totally doing the Mars thing. We definitely are going to settle Mars. First, though, we need all of the money. We need anything that could possibly make money. That's SpaceX now. It's like the expansionist idea there of we don't yet have enough money and revenue and business lines to fund the Mars thing.

We need one more really big mega thing. And we need one, like, are you going to start running supermarkets? to make additional money on the margins? Are you going to, you know, I guess not own and operate a newspaper in the, in the D.C. area, but are you going to find these other areas that you're going to bring in to make additional revenue? Or, like, when can you classify, yeah, we've got enough revenue to fund the actual vision? And that's running through that process is where I end up with you that, like, oh, no,

it's just like a really big business that's good at certain things, but still operates on very standard grounds in most other ways. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, I don't know if I like, I was already kind of thinking this way. Like, you know, the promise of Mars was like for the last few years is kind of already been like in the back of my mind like, that's over. That's not happening. And then this maybe I was holding out hope that I was wrong. And then this week is like, nope, I was right.

I just thought it wasn't going well, right? Like we felt the half-bakedness of those Elon Musk keynotes about Mars. But I just thought that was Starship. not going well. Like, okay, so just like you said, so they're bringing in a NASA of revenue per year with Starlink. Elon Musk is the richest human who has ever existed. Like, he could add two more NASA's budget from his own personal wealth every year until he's dead. And it would be fine, you know.

And so like, well, actually, hmm. Like, I feel like he could do actually that a little bit. But you can start selling off to all the other shares of his company. Yeah, Bezo style for Blue Origin. start diluting, right? And to be like, I don't care anymore. Like, I just need to get this money into the, the next 20 years is transferring this into. Yeah, it's like a reverse mortgage. Like, you know, when you get old and you start, yeah, it's the exact same thing, right? It's just like, I don't, I'm not going to take it with me. So I got to start. SpaceX reverse mortgage is amazing. So like,

the question is like, okay, so if you really do care about, I hate this term, it's extending the light of human consciousness. Don't say it like that. Just say it regular. Jesus Christ. Like, if you really care about that, then like, what is your excuse? Like, when is there going to be a better time? Right. Have you not gathered enough resources to do that? You're not 25.

Yeah. You got no money problems. You have all the infrastructure ready to go. Petal on the metal, baby. Let's go. Like, what are we waiting for? I don't get it. I just, and that, the only answer you can really come up with there is like not really a, it's

kind of heartbreaking if you're a diehard, right? Yeah, if you're a 2015 era like person rushing the stage at Guadalajara, yeah, totally. 10 years ago, we're right here being like, holy shit, dude, look at this video they just dropped. Look at this rock. Oh, my God. But the problem is that makes us annoyed is that's still there, right? That's still in there.

No one else in the industry is doing it to the level that SpaceX is. And it's just getting wrapped up in a lot of this other stuff. Yeah, it's, it is. it is a weird. It definitely is a weird thing. It's also, I mean, intrinsically, we hate talking about Elon Musk generally, you and I, but it's hard not to in this conversation because I thought for a while he bought Twitter because he was bored because Starship was not doing much at Bocachia at that time. That was that year where nothing was happening and they were building and there were no launches. And I was like, he was bored. And then, but then everything that's happened since, right, is like,

he frames these things as like the existential risk that needs to be defended against like free speech is an existential risk so I must devote a bunch of resources to quell that issue I mean like quell the threats to it as I see it so then I can move on to the next thing and then AI is in a similar vein which was like we need to make sure there's the good AI not the bad AI and so we need to put resources to make sure that doesn't destroy our chances to Mars. And yeah, and it's like, well, but if you spend all the money on the Mars thing, all along you've said you're going to make this much cheaper to do the Mars thing.

But you've added very capital intensive things in between here and there. Somehow on the roadmap now has entered making sure a social network allows you to say whatever you want on the internet. And then also it flies against the financial argument too because it's like, I'm going to make Mars so cheap. So cheap that you only have to have a million AI data centers to pay for it. I need all the money because it's so cheap to do. You're like, what are we doing here?

The same argument that we make of like how much cheaper this time around will be than Apollo, but we expect the budgets for landers to be 10x what they were in the 60s on inflation-adjusted basis. Like, well, I thought it was cheaper. I thought we were doing this cheaper. Where are we not doing it cheaper or are we doing it cheaper? I can't tell.

So, yeah, that's... Yeah. At the same time, so here's the AI thing that I'm crossed up on. I don't understand why... So there's a lot of people that think this, and I've seen a comment in the chat about this, that like the merger is to hide a really bad business and a loser in XXAI with the very good business of SpaceX. And that you can find enough of a common theme in this AI data center push to convince everyone that they are a good pairing. And that way you can kind of wash away the issues that there are with X and then move it on into the SpaceX and do something.

some math and you get rid of all that and then you don't look as dumb for spending 44 billion on a network that you at one point tried to not buy after trying to buy it. I kind of can't totally disagree with that because I don't know why owning a model and a training set and the the AI engineering force is really beneficial to SpaceX on that data center front because they already had everything they needed. They have insane access to orbit. They have an incredible platform in orbit right now for transmitting data down. They have an amazing pedigree for building spacecraft and operating them in space. And they could have had, I don't really think that their fortunes were going to be affected in any way if they didn't have their own model to train.

Like if GROC was not a thing, everyone that is going to put a data center in orbit, which are a lot of individuals out there that are talking about this from startups like StarCol, Cloud, AWS is going to have some data centers up there if data centers are a thing. There's plenty of people that are going to put data centers in space, and they would have either bought a SpaceX bus or a launch to put it up there, or even just make that part of Starlink. Starlink is now consumer internet and data centers. That makes sense.

Who gives a shit what runs on them? You don't need your own model to train. So I don't see how the X portion actually benefits them on deploying data centers in space. They could have done that anyway. You make it, it's almost like what they should have done is kept XAI separate and then charge them a boatload of money to put the things up and just milked it. They would have anyway. Yeah. And then if the bubble would have popped, XAI files for bankruptcy and SpaceX walks away with all the money. And you still have a shitload of computers. I bet we'll figure out what to do with computers. We're pretty good at having an insane amount of computers and finding stuff to do with them. One question I do want to ask, and this is, So we've had instances in the past where Elon has announced mergers or acquisitions or plans to do that kind of thing a little preemptively, right?

And so is, I know there's been a lot of coverage of this and, okay, they're planning to merge and stuff, but like, what does that actually mean? Like, maybe there is some sort of like different setup they're going to do and that's going to shield space section, those kind of things. Or maybe like they called it a merger, but it wasn't actually emerge. Like maybe it's not even going to go through. because of whatever reason. Like, you know, we might want to just asterix that and be like check in on six

months to see like, okay, well, how did this actually shake out? Because it may be a whole different story. Jake, I still don't think they're going to IPO. Like, they seem to be preparing for it. And everyone tell me, but I don't, and I believe all of our friends that have the reporting and the sources, but I still, my brain refuses to believe that this is actually going to happen. See, your denial too. I am, I am.

In the back of your mind, there's still spaces. No, no, not even that. I just can't, I can't figure out how any of this really helps. them if yeah yeah i don't get i man it's it's very weird i still refuse to believe that there were like the only way left to raise money was ipo like they have shown no inability to fundraise and do secondary share sales and well i guess i mean the let's play devil's advocate the retail investing should theoretically pay more than the private investors right like per per percentage point i think that's the theory yeah yeah so

I guess there's that, but yeah, I don't know. I don't get it. They weren't short on cash. They're raking it in with Starlink. I don't get it. I mean, now, all right, to play devil's devil's advocate. We call that the Angels Advocate. Angel's Advocate.

Until recent, so I do it, there is a small qualifier I'll apply to this, but as everyone knows, Jake says, we are, what did you call us earlier? That we have... Multidisciplinary, yeah. Multidisciplinary. I'm an Apple, large part of my life, right? Both professionally and personally. And they are the company that felt the most similar in rise and dominance and performance

to SpaceX. I see a lot of parallels in the, yeah, the 2001 to now run of Apple and the SpaceX run from like 08 to now. there's a lot of similarities with the way that they are, that they came up as this kind of like rebellious force in the industry that had a different take, a very strong founder, a lot of the same ethos in terms of engineering prowess and quality and sticky on the vision and a lot of similar DNA. Against the entrenched existing competitors.

Yeah. Yeah. flipping off IBM and suing the Air Force and Boeing and Lockheed, right? Like there's a lot of, a lot of shared ethos there or whatever. Is that ethos, pathos, logos? Which one is that? One of the Oases. I don't know.

Yeah. I don't speak Italian. I do speak the best Italian. I think that's Greek, but we'll go for it. It's definitely not Italian. It might even be Latin. I don't know. And so Apple, right, like they achieved escape velocity in the iPhone era, for sure.

And for a handful of years, they really did maintain the same culture that got them there. and while they were on top of the world in terms of how big they were and the resources they had behind it and I mean just the scale of what they were doing and then in recent years that's taken a turn right I think my biggest canary in the coal mine is that I no longer know anyone personally that works at Apple and that's so alarming to me right not like I don't know not like I know all the best people in the world but like for the past 20 years I've known people personally that work at like corporate Cupertino Apple. And I don't know anyone personally there anymore.

They've all left. And that's the most concerning thing I could know, just because I feel like I should know some people there. If I do a bunch of work in this field, and I'm often at conferences with these people and, like, hanging out with them. And it just, so there has been retention issues there, and that's changed the turnover, the things they're working on.

And then that then results in what we're seeing now, which has talked about a lot, that, like, their hardware's still really great, but their software sucks. And the design's weird, and the design guy got fired, and liquid glasses is, is shit to work with on a professional level.

And it does, like you said, when the IPO is the beginning and the end, like that, I don't know when that moment was for Apple, but it does feel like we're kind of over the hill to some extent. And I, I'm dumby that I literally work in Vision Pro all day when I'm coding. So I'm not like, I'm not like, I throw out my Apple stuff and I'm using Android's now, but there is something that I feel like we're over the crest with them. And, and like, what is, if this isn't, what is the signifier to you that SpaceX has like turned that corner?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, it just, it feels like all of it is. That's why I think in isolation, none of these would have been too many alarm bells, but just like all wrapped up. It's like now we got to like Starlink, when Starlink happened, it was like a little weird. And we were like, wow, it's like, this is a whole line of business that we just not expect a rocket company to get into. And then, you know, you had that take.

Why do you want to be an ISP? and then, but we reconciled it because it's like, okay, well, we're going to make a bunch of money and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they did that. And it's like, okay, great. Now we can, we can go do the thing. And then it's like, oh, no, actually there's a chapter two of this thing where we're going to start up a new business line where we sell data centers. I still think the data center thing makes so much sense, though. It makes sense financially, but like it. I think it makes sense for what SpaceX is. They're an infrastructure and transportation company. Yeah, maybe. It's all the other accoutrema around it, I think, that is the problem.

But at the same time, though, like this, this is not a side quest that they're going to wrap up this summer, you know, like this is going to be the next five to 10 years to get their feet under them in terms of being able to offer, you know, the quality of service for whatever on orbit compute thing they're going to sell to who. I don't know what it's going to look like. But to get that all up and running and deployed. I mean, it's going to be five, 10 years. And that's going to be, that's going to be. So like at the end of that, you're going to have fucking Elon Musk in his what, it's like 60, late 60s by that or something. to be like, okay, I think we're ready to go to Mars now if you still like not cropped over from whatever. But like like, you know what I mean? Like it's not, this is non-trivial. This is,

I understand that you want to have the infrastructure. You want to make the money and that's great. But like this is a big departure from what the company was supposed to be about. And so, yeah, I mean, made the same idea. It's just like great. Like 10 years from now, space is going to be a whatever, a 10 trillion dollar company. They're going to have all these all these satellites in orbit. Everyone's going to use them for everything. And we'll, we're like, cool, I guess we have that now. And also, when are we going to do all the cool space stuff? I don't know.

I go back and forth, but it's like, ugh. It's kind of heartbreaking in a way, right? All right. Let's do the, let's flip this and look at the blue origin side of the equation for a minute. Because we have not talked about the cancellation of New Shepherd. What do you make of that? The whole stitch. So the two things that I think about this, right, are either for a long time, we've criticized Blue Origin for switching things that they're focused on too much and never really being sticky on anything in particular. But then the other time, we've criticized them for things that felt like distractions from the core thing that they're interested in. And I don't know, is this them simplifying down to the stuff that really matters? Or is it them jumping and being interested in too many things and not actually being sticky on particular? any particular one.

Yeah, I, I don't know. And it's very curious how they worded it as a pause, because it's like, you can't. That ain't pause. You can't pause this for two years. So why did you say, like, so are you just, you need to cancel it, but you're afraid to say the word cancel? I don't know why it's like that or something else going on there.

But, I mean, I have always said that it's, that's been a good, good business line for them because it's like, operational. It's making sales. You know, like the, you can have criticisms about the kids, but like it's flying. You know, like it was going every monthish. And people were buying it. And it was like, nobody died, you know? Like, like, there's not much more. All this time, when people talk about it, like, I love commercial space because, you know, governments aren't going to control who goes to space and we're going to have these like, it's like, they were doing the thing. Like, they were doing it. You could just go to blow origin.com and fill out an email

or a form or whatever and buy a ticket to space and like you could go next month. Like that's, it's what we've been asking for and they were doing it. And I think that was like fantastic. I know there's people that think, oh, it's not orbital so it doesn't matter or whatever bullshit gatekeeping they want to do. But like this is nice. Yeah. I don't know. I'm confused. I don't maybe I'm confused. But at the same time, like, of course, I don't think it was profitable yet. I don't think they'd figure that out. No. And maybe it is just like, you know, it's a new CEO,

all hands on deck for the important things. That happens with new CEOs that they step in and go, I got a mix shake up and align the interests and get everyone going, right? So maybe that's just like an unfortunate, you know, sacrifice for that, for that move. But I don't know, it's tough. I was a little susceptible to the argument that, this was just bad press for Blue Origin in terms of like, you know, the flying Katie Perry's and

whatnot just results in people like grumbling about stuff. But I'm also kind of not susceptible to that because we are at a unique time in history when like the thing that rich people do can be talked about a lot and seen by everybody in the world where like, like, I bet that talk was going on when airplanes were first flying that there was a lot of like, you know, us grumbling about like these rich assholes up there on the planes flying places. for vacation. I just drive places. I mean, we're doing that now. Yeah, but I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's just private jets now, but it's the exact same thing, right? Yeah, but like, how many, how many shit takes about a Blue Origin launch were tweeted out on a phone from the

seat on a commercial airline with internet that was using Starlink, right? Like, a lot. And that only, that entire stack only existed, because at one point, rich assholes paid for the initial thing that then resulted in that being developed and being cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and then everyone had it. So, like, that is the flow of technology. and technological advancements through all of human history, whether we like it or not, whether you like it or not, whether you map naps to your political beliefs or not. That is literally how the last several tens of thousands of years have existed in humans, like books.

Books one time were rich asshole things. Actual books. Now you can buy books. You can get books for free because people don't want books. Being able to read was a rich asshole thing. Yeah, reading. Yes, totally. Writing things down.

Rich asshole thing for a while. So that argument will never commit to me. Write a diary? Honestly, these two things. Both of these two storylines are two things that I won't necessarily ever buy, which is the rich asshole storyline of like they're doing this dumb thing that's frivolous. And the other is like that sounds like too many things that we would never make use of. I bet we won't need that many things in the future. That argument has never been like we used to have four megabytes of memory on things. And now we have like four terabytes and we're running out of space. So the whole like that sounds like too many computers to put in space. I'm like I bet we'll put more computers than that in space. at some point. That does not, the amount of things is never going to be an actual argument to me. Yeah. And like, I've come around on orbital data centers. At first I was kind of like, that sounds like a stupid idea, but the, the like refresh rate for them and the decentralization and the like auto scaling you can do and like the manufacturerability and automation, like,

you can just turn the dial and more data center happens. You don't have to like fucking buy a new plot of land and negotiate with the local government. And any of that stuff, it's just like, satellite makes, you know, factory makes constellation go, right? So I've kind of come around on that. And so I'm not, I'm not super worried about like, all right. If the AI bubble pops, I think their demand will drop, but there'll be a demand still. They'll just, you know, okay, well, now we start deploying different chips and off we go, right?

Like, it just kind of, they can adapt pretty fast in terms of like a, you know, it fits like a five-year life cycle on a satellite. like it doesn't take a lot to change it. So I've come around on that. Also the case that like if you are a company that is focused on expanding the light of human consciousness out into the solar system, I bet wherever you go you're going to need data centers. They're going to need computers out there. So it's not completely at odds with it. I don't think it's like necessarily a bad business decision. It's just not the business I thought they were. That's the only it's It'd be like if like your darling company that makes these products that you love.

And then it's like they're pivoting and like we're going to make like copper pipes now. And you know what? We need copper pipes everywhere. So it's a great. You're all this demand will never go away. We're always going to need copper pipes. And you're like, that's great, man. Like I'm excited for you that you're making all these cup.

But like I just don't give a shit about copper pipes. I just like that doesn't get me out of bed in the morning. Right now it does. Right now it literally gets me out of bed in the morning. It's copper pipes going into my house. So. Two on the nose. Galvanized steel pipes for me right now with all the electrical bullshit.

But the point still stands. It's not exciting, right? And it's like, that's part of the attraction for SpaceX and the Blue Origin a bit too. It's like they're doing really cool, interesting things that like will change the world. And data centers is like, well, all right. Cool, you're going to get into making highways too? Like what else we're going to do? I mean, all these things sound like Blue Origin projects.

Like actual infrastructure, that is the point, right? That's always been the express point of Blue Origin is infrastructure in space and moving things off of Earth. So if they don't announce a data center thing, I mean, they announced TerraWave, right? If there's not a data center component of TerraWa, if I would be shocked. Yeah, probably. Mm-hmm. The New Shepherd thing, I am left with one other question, Jake. there are people that listen to this show that may be able to enact some of this

and I would I would ask that they pass this message on to the right individual can we book a weekend at the astronaut hotel John in Van Horn? Can we do a show around the fire pit? Yeah, can we come and do a show there from what is now the coolest Airbnb out in? A little walk out to the pad, ring the bell, right? Yeah, can we do it? can we do it? Yeah.

Hmm. I think we should do that. If we can do that. Did we solve it? Did we figure out what's our takeaway? Yeah, I mean, I'm buying the data center thing generally in the industry. I'm here for it. I think it makes a ton of sense.

My only criticism is that I don't see how SpaceX having a model of their own is an enabler to that. They already were way ahead of everybody else. the industry to be able to deploy these things. And it's like the worst model. Depends what you want to do with it, Jake. Yeah, I guess. It really does. It really does depend.

Yeah. Big use case dependent thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. It's, uh, things changed this week. Things changed this week. It was a big week.

Yeah. Very big week. I don't know to think about it. I got a day. Vulcan solid rocket booster is issued. Is that what you mean? Things definitely change there as well. Is ULA cooked, Jake?

Is ULA cooked? I know they're not launching 22 rockets this year. I will put money down for that. Yeah. It's Northrop Grumman cooked, I guess, is the question. They haven't cooked for a while. They're just... That's Ross, man.

Space side, maybe. but there probably got lots of missiles department or whatever but I'm just gonna there's an intrusive thought I have in my head and I mean the Department of War I have an intrusive thought Jake

oh there's two pretty big Northrop Grum and solids that are sitting on a pad somewhere waiting to wait in to launch how there's like no technical they were invented by they were invented by

my grandfather yeah no ATK what's what's What was the company called in 1970? Yeah, Morton Thiacall. Yeah.

That's the saving grace of that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're good. We're good. How do you feel about a March launch of Artemis II? Let's get to the Artemis II portion of the show.

They're doing a secret fueling test on the pad today, I think, right? Secret underneath those tidersin test today. Man, these fucking seals. I mean, most of them. them worked. Okay. That gives me confidence. Like, you know, I'm just like, this is, it's the exact same thing that happened with Artemis 1. And it's like, it just happened. It just always happens because, you know, nobody puts hydrogen in a corner, you know? Like, it's like, you got to use it, man. And so they keep, oh, we're going to tweak the flow rate and the temperature and kind of cool it down

it. And then we're just going to, we're just going to ease it. This is very carefully like this is not, That's not good ops, you know? Like, that's, it's like what you do when you're desperate and you just need to get it over the finish line, you know? And that's not what I want in the moon rocket. It's going to take my first compatriot to the moon. I love a unscheduled, unannounced hydrogen test, though. Like, do more of that.

That's the point, right? Like, if you were, if you were doing so many fueling tests that you didn't have to tell us every time, that would be great. That would be a great use of your time down there. Yeah. You think that's signature Isaacman right there? Yeah, probably. Also, I mean, if he had one,

I don't know why I have never said this when we've done our, like, if you were dictator of NASA, what would you do? Can you manufacture a single test article tank that has the hookups of an SLS vehicle so that they can do something on the pad and immediately test it, regardless of where the rocket actually is. Can we not have a test article that's out there at all times to be running the ground systems through? Look, hardware is expensive, Anthony.

We have to build one thing, and that's it. The budget is, budgets are tight these days. It doesn't even have to be full size, Jake. Give me a milk stool. Give me some interfaces. Russell's coming for that, man. He's coming for that. Wait for government's bending.

Because I feel, honestly, I feel for the ground systems people that they are like it is not expressly not their decision to not have a test article to work with the fact that they don't

is crazy and I'm sure infuriates them every day and I don't know like I think the problem is it would be shocking how much that would cost to develop and that's alarming

it'd be so much so much money it'd be like 800 million dollars or something yeah I mean, doing the way that's doing it. I bet there's companies that might or may not be working on data centers right now that could build them something that's approximately the right size

but the hookups that they're looking for. Boeing, like, look, we're going to have to rearrange all of them issued. Like everything has got to change. Our mystery is now 2036. We need new tooling. Yeah, all new tooling. So call your congressman. Brutal, man.

Yeah, I just, that's the part that hit me of, like, is there not a way to test this all the time? No. You have to test the pad, fly emission, and wait two years for the next one to get there to test. That's the system that we're working with. That's crazy.

Yes. That's crazy. It's a horrible rocket. It's horrible. It's a terrible situation. It's got payload capacity. Congrats. But everything else is horrible.

Just awful shit. But I did see they're activating the test stand that they're going to test the EUS on, Jake, out at Stennis. so don't forget that's coming your way baby freaking the US you got a Canadian flying to the moon soon though yeah

have you said thank you once I said thank you I gave you half a bridge for free and all I got was a cancelled Stanley Cup so I don't know what you want me to say man I'm trying to work with you here Oh, brutal. It's just a shame that the Winter Olympics will be over by the time Artemis flies.

Could have had some good U.S.-Canada content as part of the Olympics. Yeah. Instead, we're just going to have to crush you. I don't know. I have a vibe about this USA hockey team, although not while I'm watching this out of the side of my eyes here of this Latvia game, not going as well as I thought of what I went. But we're winning, but not as much of that's not 17-0.

No, no. Yeah. It's the brutal part about the Olympic hockey. Like, I like Olympic hockey, but sometimes for some of the games, you're like, we don't need to air this one. No, just have some mercy, man. I put on Switzerland, France this morning. And I was like, I don't know if I really need to put this one on.

This is a. It's like, you may as well just put us up against like fucking Jamaica or something. I think I've heard of three of those players this morning in the France, Switzerland hockey game. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. Well

So SpaceX cooked ULA cooked What else we got? Blue Origin New Shepard cooked Yeah We're mixed on SpaceX We're mixed Yeah

We're mixed Yeah I'm mixed Skewing cynical Yeah I just I try to think about You know extracting someone from the Guadalajara

IAC session And then smash cut to today And fill them in on the storylines. Like, where, where are they at on it? I don't know. Yeah, start with, what do you think it'll be like in 20, 26, 10 years from now? And then they write down all their story and they'd be like, okay, here's what actually happened. How do you feel about that? There was a comment in the chat. Somebody knew that I don't know. I haven't seen this name before, but X-AI is by far the best and fastest builder of data centers in the world. But that's the reason why.

The point is this isn't in the world. SpaceX is already the best at anything space. They didn't need this help. It's totally different. It's a new ballgame. They have the people for this. They operate Starlink. They build all these spacecraft.

It's way more like that than it is the data centers that are happening here on Earth. There will not be water. Water will not be a topic in space data centers. Maybe a little bit, but not really. Like, it's a different thing. They already had the lead. That's the part that I'm like mystified by. And I think, and I think, me saying that,

think it is a good decision for them to get into. I think it is a thing that in the way that we talked about Blue Origin and their momentum threatening them on the moon, the competitors that would rise in the orbital data center thing, SpaceX needs to and should be defensive about that because that presents a massive challenge to SpaceX because to pull that off, you need to be operating like SpaceX in terms of how well you can pull things off. So that is a threat. And I think they should address it. I don't know that they needed to have the political baggage of owning a social network that has been the center of the political universe for so many years. Yeah, that's annoying. You know how much better I'd feel about this, Jake, if they brought back

the regular third party developer API for Twitter, and I could use my old Twitter clients still. I feel so much better if I can do this all on tweet bot than I can right now. Yeah. For everyone who works at SpaceX, that is our message. Please bring back the Twitter API and also please bring back Red Dragon. Thank you very much. Oh, Red Dragon, man. Pour one out for Red Dragon. Dragon. XL. Cooked. Red Dragon Cooked. We never talked about it, Jake. No, we didn't. Take a victory lap. There's no new take. There's no new take. I said it wasn't real. It wasn't real. It's incredible. It's going to be the most right you ever were on any story. Have you ever been more right than their Dragon Xcel story line? I don't think so. What even comes

close. Like, what's a We Martians take that comes close? I mean, ending the show in 2020. Cancelling it was the right time. That might have been a take. Wow. We launched anything since. Wow. That's a crazy, that's a crazy thing I never put together, Jake. Good job. Yeah. Your Mars one take was good. That was a good one. But that was not, that was not prescient. It was being like, look, it's busted. Yeah, you're like, I'll do it.

No one else is doing this. I'll do it. Yeah. Geez. Well, do we have things on the calendar? Okay, so we did have something on the calendar, but I also got an email that I haven't checked yet, so we're going to hold off on announcements.

There we go. We'll have something, though, as usual. We'll be here, for sure. Is it your birthday soon? Is it your birthday? Tomorrow, okay. Tomorrow, yeah. I just looked at the calendar,

I know it's around here somewhere. Yeah, that's it. That's tomorrow. Well, happy birthday. I'm getting a crew 12 launch for it, for my birthday. For your birthday, we destroyed SpaceX.

This isn't like that one year where the Eagles won the Super Bowl and then I flew to Florida and we hung out and watched Falcon Heavy launch and I flew back in time for the Super Bowl parade. That was the best birthday week that there ever was. a great one

there's still time though Jake we're monitoring the calendar we've got to see how this Artemis 2 launch windows are a real problem for me as somebody with two very young boys that I would like to take to see a rocket launch the time is a challenge there's a guy in his 40s too

yeah yeah problematic on either end of the bell curve the starship launch which people are saying March but I would bet April stay tuned folks I'm monitoring that one because I think that would be fun

so pick up a van while you're down there pick up the van I got to go to Star Base before the Republic company so before they fully jumps chart yeah it's got to be done

I just thought like they probably have they'll take the walls down at their quarterly earnings reports and then they'll put the walls back up exactly Rocket Lab style I'll have real zesty interviews

at Eric Berger once they're a public company That's a bit of both actually Oh man All right y'all Good hanging out Cheers Bye

Bye Bye Bye One two three four five five four three two one Two one into death