Foust Forward | Elon Musk, SpaceX, and the dangers of social media distractions

Nearly 12 hours after the successful Falcon 9 launch of the Crew Dragon mission on September 28, SpaceX announced that there had been an “exorbital burn” in the upper stage after Crew Dragon deployment, causing the stage to re-orbit. The specific area is in the South Pacific Ocean. That grounded the rocket until at least October 4, just as the company was preparing to launch time-critical missions like the European Space Agency’s Hera asteroid probe and NASA’s Europa Clipper.

The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has been noticeably silent about the anomaly — the second in less than three months regarding the Falcon 9’s upper stage after years of problem-free flights. By comparison, during the previous anomaly in July, he was providing updates on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter that he also owns, about ultimately unsuccessful efforts to rescue Starlink satellites stranded in low orbit.

Politics on missiles

Musk has not been silent about X in general, as political topics currently dominate his posts. When he mentioned SpaceX in recent weeks, it was often to complain of a “legal war” by the FAA (to delay licensing the next spacecraft launch and fine SpaceX for other licensing violations) and the FCC (to eliminate rural broadband support for Starlink.) There were much fewer in other SpaceX activities, including a recent upper stage anomaly.

Of course, Musk’s attention has long been divided, whether it’s with electric car maker Tesla or smaller ventures like The Boring Company, Neuralink, and now X. For years, other executives, like President and Chief Operating Officer Gwen Shotwell, have handled the Everyday stuff at SpaceX. Today’s operations.

However, the public perception, based on his behavior with Company X, is that he appears less connected to SpaceX than at any time in the 22 years since the company was founded. Even when the company falters, as did the last high-profile anomaly, he remains focused on political activism. He doesn’t offer the behavior you’d expect from a CEO after such a setback: more details about what happened, and assurances that the problem will be corrected, when the rocket flies again.

Perhaps the political fever will break after the November elections and Musk will return to focusing more on SpaceX. However, he has also considered serving in a future Trump administration in some capacity, such as a “government efficiency” committee, which would further distance him from SpaceX.

Ambitious timelines

To be clear, Musk is still talking about making humanity multi-planetary and sending humans to Mars. He posted on the website Life and life support systems. Whether the crew will get a return flight.

This is typically an audacious goal from Musk, but his track record shows how such timelines can falter. (In 2017, for example, he said at the International Astronautical Congress that SpaceX would launch the first human missions to Mars in 2024.) Moreover, in 2026, NASA will be eagerly awaiting SpaceX’s lunar rover to land on the Moon for the Artemis 3 mission (or at least an unmanned test flight) and presumably won’t want to distract from the Mars launch campaign.

Even Musk’s defenders treat these plans with a great deal of skepticism. In a conversation on X with John Carmack, a video game developer who ran the suborbital spaceflight company Armadillo Aerospace for several years, Musk announced that Starship “should make more than 1,000 Earth orbit flights per year by 2028.” That would be many times the total number of orbital launches expected worldwide for 2024.

Carmack was skeptical. This flight rate, he wrote, “seems less likely than a transmission to Mars in 2030—both plausible, but wildly optimistic!”
“I expect to see both,” Carmack concluded, after 1,000 spacecraft launches a year and humans landing on Mars, “a little later.” However, unless Musk is more distracted by social media, politics, or other interests.

This article first appeared in the October 2024 issue of SpaceNews magazine.

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