Some More News - Some More News: Elon Musk and the New Owners of Space

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Hi. Companies owned by Elon Musk are now essential to how nations explore space and get connected on satellite internet. Perhaps Musk and other billionaires shouldn't be able to do unfettered capitalism in the cosmos? Especially when they claim to be driven and inspired by stories of moneyless space communism? Every week of November, AG1 will be running a special Black Friday offer for a free gift with your first subscription, in addition to the Welcome Kit with Vitamin D3+K2. So make sure to check out https://DrinkAG1.com/morenews to see what gift you can get this week! Stay comfortable this holiday season without compromising style—because with Public Rec’s Dealmaker Pants, you really can have it all. And for a limited time, our viewers and listeners get 20% off their entire order with code SMN at https://PublicRec.com SimpliSafe is offering our viewers and listeners exclusive early access to their Black Friday sale. This week only, you can take 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. Head to https://SimpliSafe.com/morenews to claim your discount and make sure your home is safe this season. With top-quality coffee from the nation’s best roasters, Trade truly has something for everyone. Give the gift of great coffee with Trade – visit https://drinktrade.com/MORENEWS Give the gift of practical luxury that benefits everyone in your household. For a limited time, our viewers and listeners get 10% off their first bidet order when you use code SMN at https://hellotushy.com Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15WQ3-eQazf-1Wbrz_fNK67-iIWY5DvR-MhYQ7JgqXEM/edit?usp=sharing Check out our MERCH STORE: https://shop.somemorenews.com   SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  

Oh my God, I can't believe we're still doing this show. How is there more show? Okay, well, here's some more news. Elon Musk, ah! Okay. Okay. Well, Elon Musk is a weird little Nazi dude who went all in for Trump.

The, that can't be right. It says next president. Okay, okay, okay. Something or someone must have really messed up for that to be true, but here we are. You know what? I bet it's that Hock-Twa's fault actually. Get her!

Listen, we're gonna have a whole episode or thousand about the election after Thanksgiving. For now, you can listen to our podcast to get more up to the minute coverage. Like and subscribe. Anyway, remember Elon Musk. Congratulations to President Elon Musk, the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States.

For the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America, Elon Musk! Oh, golly balls. We could do the entire episode on those 30 seconds of video alone. Like did you notice that he came out with a mic like he was Dave Chappelle or something and then realized there was already a mic up there and had to meekly hand off the cute little prop mic he brought. Did you notice that? Anyway, I didn't watch the whole speech.

I mainly just watched those first 30 seconds on a loop. I'm so sick of this guy, but he just is still. But listen, look, hey now, champ, we're not here to talk about Elon Musk and his terrible, terrible, sad, terrible politics. Or are we? We're not, perhaps. What I want to talk about is Elon Musk, the space pervert.

The guy who apparently wants to make Starfleet real, presumably because he hasn't watched a single episode of Star Trek. But man, I agree Elon, we should get rid of billionaires. We're already running late on the bell riots. Because yeah, we wrote a lot of this episode before the election, but some of it after is gonna be a real wacky episode.

Point is, we're all hoping to not live on this planet anymore. So let's talk about the future of space and perhaps some other things too. But here's some bad news. It turns out that the Nazis will be up there too. Boo, boo space, everyone, boo space. Look up and boo, boo.

Boo. Space kinda sucks now. I mean, a lot of things suck now, but also space. Like space's early work was cool for sure. I love the Big Bang and the invention of light. I do like some later stuff too. Killing the dinosaurs was pretty bold, innovative, disruptive, but lately,

I don't know, man. Ever since humans joined, it's really dropped off. Going back to Hair Musk, no matter if you think he really sucks or it just sucks a little bit, the only two options anymore, most people can't deny that SpaceX and Starlink are genuine accomplishments

that could potentially advance space travel. And like, yeah, Elon has very little to do with the actual inventions, but he is bankrolling and presumably managing that, while he's not spending literally hundreds of hours playing Diablo 4. SpaceX is so ahead in the space game that they recently had to rescue a crew

from a competing company. That's pretty embarrassing, and also not at all surprising for Boeing. They are also genuinely making efforts to cut down on space debris, something we'll talk more about later, such as catching their own rocket booster instead of leaving it up there like a condom wrapper on the boardwalk.

See, you gotta collect that used condom to offer to your friends. They've even deorbited their Starlink satellites in order to keep their methods sustainable. I mean, don't get me wrong, we've talked about the many unsustainable things SpaceX does before on this show. I simply want to point out that for the general public,

it's understandable to be impressed with SpaceX. They caught the damn rocket! Lending burn, energy ignited. We're now down to three Raptor engines. Very neat, very dick-like. We love when space is dicks. And while space has always been this broad, dick-shaped goal for humanity,

it's starting to also affect us directly with Starlink and the advancement of satellite internet. If you're watching this episode from somewhere in rural America, you may be familiar with companies like HughesNet, which until fairly recently were the only way people living in remote places could get online, barely. But Starlink, while still sucking

compared to land-based internet, seems to suck way less than its predecessors. That's because these next generation internet satellites aren't way out in space like the old ones were, but instead operate in what's called low earth orbit. You can even see them in the sky. Gross actually. Still, the idea behind Starlink is that anyone,

no matter where they are, will be able to get online with an inexpensive kit and an unobstructed view of the sky. That may sound silly for a lot of us internet already havers, but there are 2.6 billion-ish people who could benefit from this, including remote tribes. I mean, if you're from a tribe and are now getting to watch this show,

my suggestion is to destroy your internet before it's too late, smash it, smash it now. Like that story about the tribe being addicted to online porn was fake, but it's only a matter of time. Porn is the fire in which we all burn. Also, I don't think an isolated tribe will really benefit from isolating from each other, stuck to their screens, dunking on each other.

Ah, you, ah, no I know, destroyed, bad stuff. Point is, this is likely where the internet is heading. While we all fantasized about fiber optic coming to our neighborhood, companies might completely skip that step and go right to wireless internet. In fact, they already are. Meanwhile, Starlink currently has more than 6,300

active satellites in low earth orbit. And they currently have permission from the FCC for about 12,000 total, which is roughly the same number that had been launched in all of history through 2022. There are other companies trying to do this as well, but Starlink is way ahead of all of them. That includes Amazon's Project Kuiper,

which to date has only launched a couple prototypes. Come on, Amazon, catch up. You'll never have space slaves at that rate. Astronauts already pee in tubes. You're so close to your dream. So just to recap, SpaceX is making huge leaps in exploring the stars while Starlink is connecting the world like never before.

So what's the problem? How could this possibly go wrong? Well, unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that both of these companies are owned by Elon Musk, who's a weird little Nazi guy who really, really sucks. Shucks. See, in the age of learning that every celebrity and corporation is awful in some new and exciting way,

I think a lot of us have come to terms with separating the owner from the product, be that having an Amazon subscription or buying every copy of Morbius to be the coolest kid on your block. But with Starlink, we simply can't do that. The fact that it's run by a right-wing weirdo slinging his sperm at people like that guy

in Silence of the Lambs absolutely has consequences that will change the course of history in, dare I say, really bad ways. Because you know where else Starlink is heavily used? War zones. Orbiting hundreds of kilometers above the Earth, these satellites are playing a role in the Ukraine War. The Starlink satellite network, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has been providing the country with internet service. It all started with a tweet at the end of February

by the Ukrainian vice prime minister asking Musk to help. And this is where the story of Starlink goes from a wholesome tale about helping people in the Amazon discover their kinks, to a terrifying saga of one very stupid man playing a key role in international politics. Starlink's dabbles in war games started in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and knocked out its internet. At the request of Ukraine's government, Elon activated Starlink's satellites so the country

could get back online, and it's been using them ever since. In theory, the idea of simply and objectively allowing internet access to whoever needs it is fine. But this became problematic when Elon refused to turn on satellites over Crimea, a region that Russia took from Ukraine back in 2014. This threw off the Ukrainian military's plans to launch an attack on Russian ships

that were stationed there. Why did Elon do this after seemingly being so eager to help the Ukrainians with their cause? Well, according to Walter Isaacson's biography of Musk, he'd had a conversation with a Russian official who told him that activating Starlink over Crimea risked starting a nuclear war. Elon later defended his decision

by saying that he didn't want SpaceX to be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation. He loves pretending that his little space dildos won't be used for war, despite them absolutely being used for that. When asked about his decision, he later added this gem. I should say that, you know, well, below I'm not President Biden's biggest fan. used for that. When asked about his decision, I still respect the office. And so if, you know, if we've gotten,

if I got a request from the president type of thing, from the American president, to be clear, then I would have turned it on. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The American president, he specifies in a totally non-foreshadowing way. Because as we're now learning, Musk is reportedly in regular conversations

with Vladimir Putin, the not American president. Hey, that sounds like a treason. And before you say, whoa, Cody, treason is a serious accusation with serious consequences. Don't be so irresponsible with your words. Elon Musk called for the death penalty of anyone Democrats who vote against a bill he likes. The death penalty for all Democrats.

Anyway, I don't know. Maybe when the treason doer said the American president, he was talking about the Sorkin movie. Of course, that still doesn't make sense. And frankly, I just wanted to mention that film. Point is, he should go to jail, not Sorkin, Musk. But I also wouldn't cry if Sorkin was arrested. We'll figure out the charges later.

Coincidentally, we're now learning that Ukraine is finding Starlink equipment on Iranian designed Russian drones, which feels like something that would be in a Sorkin-esque political thriller, or more fittingly, a Jack Ryan film. Except instead of the villain being some shadowy mastermind, it's just a rich guy who thinks that chess is a dumb game.

Probably because he himself is stupid. He's a stupid man. I want to stress that. Elon Musk is a stupid person who can be easily manipulated and or bought by anyone. And he is now a key deciding factor in multiple wars and genocides. Did somebody say genocide?

Because Israel has been using Starlink as well, including in Gaza, and plans on using the satellites to stay online in the event that it winds up in a broader war. And speaking of the Middle East, Elon also tried to get Starlink involved in the Masha Amini protests in Iran in 2022, starting with a tweet that he was activating Starlink

after the US government cut back restrictions on tech companies operating there. This grand gesture was supposed to help civilians stay online after the government shut down their internet access. But apparently it wound up being basically useless and ultimately might've enabled government backed hackers to run phishing scams that helped them

track down protesters. Oh well, but it's the stupid thought that counts. Now, I obviously just blew through a lot of international politics and I'm losing my voice and maybe not pronouncing things right. I don't know, and I don't know how you land on any of that. This isn't all gonna be good or bad, which is actually kind of exactly the point.

Putting aside who Elon Musk is, an annoying dumb guy who sucks, no private unelected citizen should have this much power over wars, right? Like if you watching this actually like Elon Musk, you should still be terrified or dare I say concerned. But also it's Musk, a racist, sad little man who changes his whims depending on his need to be liked.

His decision to help Ukraine, for example, seems to fluctuate based on what Twitter thinks. He's literally just tweeting out what he plans to do and then checking how his weird following reacts. And while you might be hoping that the government would step in, of fucking course, Musk is also doing work with them and developing spy satellites as we speak.

He is now a major player in defense contractors, no different than Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman. He is fulfilling his weird little wish to become Iron Man, zooming around and deciding the fate of the world. Because unlike those other companies I just mentioned, Elon Musk is explicitly a supporter of certain political movements. Like I'm not saying that the CEO of Lockheed and Martin doesn't have a political lean,

but he's not out there at rallies, right? He's not tweeting about birth rates and how trans people are bad, nor is he buying social media sites specifically to push political propaganda. Musk has a personal agenda beyond greed, on top of his personal agenda of greed. He has both. Like Tesla is heavily entwined with the Chinese government and coincidentally

Musk has said this about Taiwan. Their policy has been to sort of reunite Taiwan with China. From this standpoint, you know, maybe it's analogous to like Hawaii or something like that. An integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China. Yes, arbitrarily not part of China. So random. Oh hey, look, SpaceX might be withholding internet from Taiwan. Also, so random. But speaking of the totally random Taiwan stuff, the good news is that other countries like Taiwan are beginning to build their own Starlink-like networks.

China is also doing this, specifically asking Musk not to send Starlink there, not for good reasons, mind you, and making their own massive satellite internet network through state-run businesses, with plans to add thousands of new satellites in low earth orbit. This will eventually, thankfully, keep Musk

from being the one man global superpower he currently is, at least in this one aspect and in some places. But this foreshadows a larger problem. While space might be infinite, the parts of it that are good for doing satellite internet are not. It will be a competition, a time sensitive competition.

Like when people are all, they're like racing to do a thing. But in space, a space, time, competition. One that will see multiple companies and corporations tossing so much garbage up there. In the words of astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, it's going to be like an interstate highway at rush hour in a snowstorm with everyone driving much too fast,

except that there are multiple interstate highways crossing each other with no stoplights. Boy, that doesn't sound safe at all. And so after the break, we're gonna step away from Musk and talk about this larger space-time competition that will be happening very soon and is in fact already happening right now. Will it be a good thing?

No, but it will distract us from everything else currently happening right now. So yes, good thing, but it will distract us from everything else currently happening right now. So yes, good thing, but also bad thing. Boo the sky, keep booing. Boo! Hello, my Plumpkins, it's Cody talking about the holiday season. Time to awkwardly gift your terrible neighbor something

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We are the ones that tipped you off, you know? So give yourself or someone you love the gift of comfort this holiday. Again, it's a no brainer. Ooh, good booing, everyone. Oh, we are back and we are sassy and we are talking about space, the great beyond, God's forever butthole. We all want to get inside of it, but not everyone can fit.

Before the break, we were foreshadowing the next space race and how everyone is just jamming more and more stuff up there. We haven't talked about it much, but they are gonna trash space. Not just with politics, but literal trash. Like, remember the movie Gravity? That film was a very dramatic take on a very real phenomenon known as the Kessler syndrome, a theoretical concept first described in 1978 by former NASA physicist Donald Kessler. Basically, it's what happens when so much space junk collects around Earth,

that it starts slamming into other space junk, creating exponentially more space junk until it's like a space junk tornado. And while what happens in gravity is the absolute worst case scenario, there are plenty of cases where orbital debris has already done serious damage to Earth. Look at the damage it caused. A hole from the roof straight through the floor. It's either space junk or space meteorite. It's 50-50. So what was it? Turns out it was space junk or space meteorite. It's 50-50. So what was it?

Turns out it was space junk from the International Space Station. What are the odds? What are the odds? Well, good actually. The odds are good. In fact, because we're putting more and more rockets into the sky, researchers are now saying

there's a non-zero probability that someone will die because of this. The team analyzed the last 30 years of launches and came up with odds that someone will eventually be killed. They say there's about a 10% chance it will happen in the next 10 years. Okay, so every country and corporation is racing to launch their gizmos into space,

potentially crashing into each other and doing who knows what to Earth. Is there anyone who can help with this? Anyone at all? -♪ Standing guard both night and day, we the Space Force from on high. Oh, dang, I totally forgot that's a thing. God, remember when they made a TV series

based on people being mad at Trump? Is that still on? So the Space Force is absolutely a way to militarize space. But surprisingly, it's also the closest we have to an international space debris watchdog. It monitors and tracks all the manmade objects in Earth's orbit. And while it doesn't clean up orbital debris itself

at this point, it is running programs like Orbital Prime to incentivize private companies to build technologies that can repair or remove defunct satellites. But that's pretty much where its power ends. It doesn't say sign off on commercial satellites from companies like Starlink or hold them accountable for their space trash. That responsibility falls on the Federal Communications Commission, which as you can assume is extremely underprepared for dealing with space debris or really anything happening up there at all. They've taken baby steps,

but we're talking about a literal global issue and beyond. Other countries have their own satellite regulations just like the US does, but as you'd probably expect, they vary widely in terms of how they're applied and enforced. There is some attempt to control this at a global level. All countries that are members of the UN affiliated

International Telecommunications Union are supposed to register their satellites years ahead of launch, so it can coordinate their radio frequencies and keep them from interfering with each other, or depending on what orbit they want to be in, snag one of a finite number of so-called orbital slots. This system should work in theory,

except that it's pretty easy to game. And that's exactly what countries are doing. For example, SpaceX has registered thousands of satellites with the ITU through four different countries, likely in an attempt to circumvent FCC regulations and associated fees, as well as to gain access to in-demand radio frequencies while they're still available. Another satellite internet company, OneWeb,

has registered its satellites through three countries, probably because it's trying to do the same thing. Ultimately, if SpaceX or whoever wants to throw satellites or whatever up there or wherever, how can we really stop them? They are running our freaking satellites now. They have more power than some governments. And in fact, here's a very important question.

Who owns space? Is it Xenu? Well, sure, yes, it's Xenu, but can anyone actually own space? Like, legally? The answer to that is mostly no, but also it's not no. We should probably explain a little bit about space law,

which sounds silly, but is in fact a serious thing. Don't laugh, maintain eye contact. Hey there. At a global level, space is the jurisdiction of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. It has established several different treaties over the years to try to get everybody to play nice up there. The most comprehensive of which is the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States

in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, better known as the Outer Space Treaty. It explicitly states that space doesn't belong to any nation and quote, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. It also says countries can't use space to host nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction, and that nations are liable

to each other if they break each other's stuff while they're up there. Oh, and the moon and other celestial bodies can only be used for peaceful purposes. So you can't use an asteroid to test out your nukes or set up a lunar military base. Shameful, cowardly stuff. Nuke the moon, I always say.

Ask anyone, I always say that. Ask me, ask me. I'll tell you straight, ask me. Yes, nuke the moon. So in short, according to the outer space treaty, countries are free to explore the cosmos as they wish, but they can't own space or the moon or Mars or the asteroids or anything else up there.

Also, before you start building your own space nuke, corporations or individuals are considered entities of the countries they come from and are treated the same way. That freaking space treaty, always one step ahead. But here's the thing, space treaty. The authors of the space treaty didn't count on one sneaky thing.

And that thing is that people like money. A lot, it turns out. Too much, one might say. And so we're beginning to see legislation designed to chip away at this treaty. In 2015, Congress passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which gives commercial space companies the right to keep any resources they find in space.

Luxembourg adopted similar legislation soon after, and is now in the early stages of planning asteroid mining operations, which include investments in a US startup backed by Google co-founder Larry Page. And speaking of creepy Silicon Valley billionaires, JD Vance Frankenstein, Peter Thiel, is also backing a space mining company.

This one with the goal of mining the moon. Oh, maybe he'll build his libertarian city on the moon, like Pluto Nash, but somehow worse. Randy Quaid will be there either way. If this all sounds to you like it conflicts with the outer space treaty, well, you're not the only one. The thing about the outer space treaty though

is that it's basically impossible to enforce. According to the UN, Israel is an apartheid state engaging in an illegal occupation, but we don't seem to care about that. You wanna go blow up space? I mean, who's gonna stop you? Space cop? Roger Wilco?

Some kind of Pulsar police? Jesus Christ. Now, so rather than abide by it, we'll probably just create new treaties that accommodate business interests because there's just too damn much money on the line. And also the US government is in love with space companies and really every corporation at this point.

It's just one big polycule because Because of course, of course, like every government agency, NASA has slowly eroded over time. We went to the moon, saw that there were no commies or oil up there, and we were done with it. No, really, NASA's budget plummeted as we were landing on the moon. So naturally, NASA has, for for decades relied on Boeing and Lockheed Martin to launch its satellites under a joint venture called the United Launch Alliance or ULA, which has received billions of dollars in government subsidies over the years.

Then SpaceX came along with a snazzy, partly reusable rocket called the Falcon 9 and claimed it could do exactly what ULA was doing for about two thirds the price. So these days, ULA and SpaceX compete for contracts to launch not just satellites, but also crew members and supplies to the International Space Station. There are other names in the game too,

like a company called Relativity Space and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. But compared to SpaceX and ULA, these guys are basically NPCs, which according to Elon, we all are. SpaceX locked down more than $3.1 billion in federal contracts in 2023, almost as much as the total

that the government committed to all its competitors combined. Of the 108 attempted US rocket launches that happened in 2023, SpaceX accounted for 98 of them. And yes, those numbers include launches of its own Starlink satellites. But even if you don't count those, it's still unquestionably ahead of the competition. All its rivals combined successfully sent up seven rockets last year. How many of those were the United

Launch Alliance? Just three. So that's all to say that SpaceX has a de facto monopoly on US space travel. They've even been hired to crash the International Space Station. Oh yeah, did you know they're crashing the ISS? Because they are.

The current station will remain busy for the better part of the next decade until 2030. Then it will be taken out of orbit and sent plunging towards Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean. Well, okay, out with the old, I get it. Like I love going to circus, circus, but I'm frankly surprised it's still standing.

So what will replace it? Some cooler, better, bigger international space station, perhaps with one of those coffee machines that makes every kind of drink. NASA plans to create multiple new space stations through partnerships with three private companies, Blue Origin, NanoRacks LLC, and Northrop Grumman. They'll work alongside NASA to build and launch mixed use stations.

The new ones will house government space programs and private companies venturing into Earth's orbit. Mm, seems kinda, wah. I mean, okay, from the science pervert perspective, there's a lot to be excited about. By teaming with private companies, these stations will likely be better maintained and there will be more innovation to come.

Some of the new stations they're planning include a lunar base and one with artificial gravity. And even stuff like 2001, A Space Odyssey Odyssey envisioned that we would have this corporate hybrid with space travel. So it's probably unavoidable, at least in this society currently, that space would be privatized to some extent. What sucks is who is doing the privatizing, obviously. But also, what really bothers, isn't that a space station is being decommissioned and replaced. It's that an international space station

is being decommissioned and replaced. And there's not going to be anything quite like it again. The ISS sort of symbolized a decades long space frenemy ship that lasted well beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union. Space in general was one of the few places where we could all get along, probably because it sucks up there and you kind of have to, but those days are fading.

I mean, don't get me wrong, the Lunar Gateway, which is a planned moon station, is a joint venture with multiple government agencies from Europe and Canada to Japan and the UAE. But for example, Russia announced it would leave the International Space Station altogether following tensions with Ukraine.

Those tensions being that Russia invaded Ukraine by doing an invasion. Russia is now in the process of planning its own orbiting space station that it will launch sometime in the 2030s. They've also reportedly teamed up with China to build a nuclear reactor on the moon, which sounds kind of terrifying.

China has made their own advances and we are now very openly in a space race with them, at least according to the administrator of NASA. So I think we are in a space race with China. They are aggressive, they are good. Right, China is on Mars, but more pressing, they're on the moon as well. And in fact, the moon is once again

becoming an object of desire. Not for science, obviously, but because we can mine the shit out of it. It's got a lot of water and precious metals that will come in handy for building long-term colonies there. But also, going back to that NASA weirdo, there's also this.

The Chinese space program is also a military space program. War? In stars? What a novel idea. We should make two great movies about that and then like one pretty good movie and also six terrible ones. But before we do that, let's take an ad break

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Moonfrakas, we did it, we're back, we are still sassy. We're talking about space and space struggles, because of course we're now looking at the moon for military bases. But wait, that's not allowed, except oh yeah, the outer space treaty is basically unenforceable. So why not? Who gives a shit? Everyone is doing it now.

In fact, there's a whole CCP Death Star thing. Well, not literally, but according to a report published by a congressional advisory group last November, China is likely trying to build a space-based nuclear weapon, ground-launched missiles that can hit satellites in low earth orbit, and a laser capable of paralyzing US satellites,

as Politico put it. Fun, I'm of course sure that the USA isn't doing anything similar and has no interest or motive in pushing fear of other countries' evil secret weapons that we're not doing, it's everybody else is doing the evil secret weapons. Not that those secret evil weapons don't exist of course. This is all on top of a nuclear capable hypersonic missile

that circles the world before hitting its target, which China allegedly tested in low earth orbit in August, 2021. Meanwhile, the US has accused Russia of developing a nuclear weapon that takes out satellites with a massive energy wave. Remember that one call of duty game that was in space? No?

Like you'd float around in space shooting guns? You really don't remember. John Snow was there anyway. This is that. that was in space? No? Like you'd float around in space shooting guns? You really don't remember. John Snow was there. Anyway, this is that. There is a very real possibility that the next big war, be that a Cold War or literal pew pew pew war, will be a space war.

And yes, on paper, this sounds very cool. On the silver screen, it is cool. But now I want you all to remember where we started this episode. Because in that event, once again, a very crucial player in that war would be SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, the guy who thought COVID would be over by April of 2020,

and called a guy rescuing children a pedophile for not using his metal tube that wouldn't have worked. And regularly boosts Nazis on Twitter, a site he bought because he was forced to because he's stupid. The guy who built this. Oh my god. Well, maybe that was a little too hard. Even if he wasn't a Nazi with questionable international ties, would you really want to trust him with a space war?

Dude didn't even know how to play Elden Ring. For the record, I'm not the only one worried about that. And in fact, that same NASA administrator we showed earlier has specifically asked SpaceX's president if Elon is closely involved with the company and was assured that he is not. Quote, I hugged her with a smile on my face if Elon is closely involved with the company and was assured that he is not, quote, I hugged her with a smile on my face

because I know she is running that thing. She's running SpaceX. This isn't a video exclusively on Elon Musk sucking and not actually being an inventor, but I just want to stress that he sucks so much that the head of NASA was so overjoyed to hear that Musk wasn't running SpaceX that he hugged the actual person in charge. And so for now, SpaceX has been good for NASA

and America's future space war. He's making those spy satellites and there's this general hope that we can keep him on a leash when it comes to Starlink's international conflicts. But at some point, he's gonna start getting involved in SpaceX, right? He's currently in charge of deregulation

and gutting government programs. He's meeting with the president-elect every day. He's elbow deep in the government and his private companies. He will get bored with Twitter and his stupid department of government efficiency that he has to run with a second guy, it's very efficient stuff. Maybe he'll try to play Starfield for a little bit, but then he'll remember that he has a space company

he can terrorize. And if the US keeps giving more and more power to SpaceX and Starlink becomes more and more vital in international politics, he could have a terrifying amount of power, more than he already has, not just over space, but over all the stuff below space. And boy, I don't know what that would look like,

but I do know what it wouldn't look like. It wouldn't look like Star Trek. I'm wearing this jacket that was given to me by the Space Force. You know, it's got Star Trek Enterprise on it. You know, it's like Starfleet Academy. We wanna make Starfleet Academy real. So there is just no fucking way that Musk has actually

watched or rather absorbed an episode of Star Trek. And to hear him talk about Star Trek and Star Wars, it's very clear what he actually got from them. You know, I grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars, it's very clear what he actually got from them. You know, I grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars was the first movie that I ever saw in a theater and it obviously affected me a lot. And we just want to have these sort of glorious, amazing, I don't know, space future, real, you know, and have exciting, inspiring things that make you glad to wake up, when you wake up at the morning, you're glad to be alive.

Right, he wants to make a glorious, amazing, I don't know, space future real, and have exciting and inspiring things to make you glad to be alive. But he doesn't actually know what those things are, does he? The same way he wanted to make the cyber truck something Mr. Blade Runner would drive, but also hates Blade Runner, it turns out,

he's just looking for the general vibes of sci-fi without understanding what these stories mean. To a person who understands stuff better than him, it's very ironic that his vision for land vehicles is out of a dystopian series where the world is crumbling, and yet his vision for space is from a utopian series where money doesn't exist and Earth is a paradise.

Those visions do not mesh. I guess, unless you think the Earth is doomed like he does. My theory is that because he does space stuff, he has to pretend he likes Star Trek. And not just him, all these guys. because he does space stuff, he has to pretend he likes Star Trek. And not just him, all these guys. Remember when Jeff Bezos put Captain Kirk into space? What did that look like again?

Is he shooting up? Oh my God. Come here. I want one. I wanna hear this. Here, you want a little of this? Hey. I like one. I want to hear this. Here, you want a little of this? Okay. I'll have fun.

Woo! Woo! Wow, that dude has not watched a minute of Star Trek. Or again, if he did, he didn't understand it or care to. Or maybe he thinks Shatner's a jerk, I guess. Wouldn't be the first person to think that. I guess my point here is that it's ironic. There's no other word for it.

It's ironic that all of these billionaires keep pointing to Star Trek as their space goal. Not just because they wouldn't even exist in that universe, but because it shows how totally unable they are to actually progress us into that type of utopia. These top-down thinkers, starting with the vibes and aesthetics of futurist stories. What they simply will never understand

is that if you actually wanted to create a Star Trek future, you can't start in space. He says he wants Starfleet, but really he wants a fleet in the stars. And he doesn't understand why those things are different. You start with the boring work, like raising the minimum wage and creating social safety nets and universal basic income,

eliminating poverty and regulating pollution, improving nutrition and education and advancing medical technology and making that medical technology nutrition and education and advancing medical technology and making that medical technology free and uniting the entire world. I'm sorry, I know that all sounds like commie woke bullshit, but that's literally what they did in Star Trek. They certainly didn't elect a failed hotel crime rapist twice, at least to become Starfleet and not, you know, the Ferengi or whatever. It is a process they don't want to do. You can't build Starfleet and make billions of dollars.

You just can't, I'm sorry. Unless of course Musk's plan is to hoard wealth and make things so bad that it does lead to the Bell Riots, which incidentally occurred in the year 2024. Fun fact. Anyway, my point is that we're not talking about opening a store here. We're not talking about a country. We're not even talking about a union of countries. We're talking about space, exploring space,

moving humanity into space as Elon wants to. That is a global endeavor that takes everyone working together with no regard for Latinum. That is simply not going to happen if Elon Musk is in charge of it. If he made Starfleet, the prime directive would be that you have to laugh at his jokes. So please, as we near the election,

keep this in mind. Sorry. Already? Ah, sorry. Okay the election, keep this in mind. Sorry. Already? Ah, sorry. Okay, well, I keep forgetting about this stuff. Who won? Oh.

That's a real shame. Did they count them again? Can we? Hey everybody, how do I sound good? Thanks for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe. That would really help us out. Leave a comment and so on and so forth. We've got a podcast called Even More News. You can check it out on the podcast store

and also this channel in video form. You can watch this show, Some More News, which is in video form now. You know, you just saw it, but you can listen to it as a podcast if you prefer that instead. We've got merch at a merch store. Check it out, look at it.

Oh, there it is. And you can go to the website that is on the screen to get those things. What's up, how you doing? I said, how are you doing? You can't hear me. You can hear me. I can't hear you.

You know what? I am tired.