[mullingitover]

I don’t look at it as being a conspiracy but as the DoD doing its job (with different political groups having different ideas about what that job is) and building technologies and systems to win wars. My take on Musk is that he’s hyperfixated on what one political group wants to do with SDI, and that’s why he’s suddenly obsessing over supporting them. Republicans certainly don’t care about any science nonsense happening with taxpayer money. They want weapons.

[panick21_]

I don't think Musk cares much about winning wars or these Starwars DoD projects. He wants to get to Mars. If DoD pays SpaceX to build something, he might do it, but that's about it.

His all-in for republicans is partly because he is anti-regulation and because he has always been a free-speech all the way guy, even before he was more directly political.

He really turned more MAGA during the pandemic when in California, the politicians didn't want to allow him to reopen the Tesla factory.

[mullingitover]

> I don't think Musk cares much about winning wars or these Starwars DoD projects. He wants to get to Mars. If DoD pays SpaceX to build something, he might do it, but that's about it.

If he's involved in a neo-SDI program I would not expect any of his public statements about his motivations to mean anything at all. He most assuredly has a TS-SCI clearance and probably handlers who are watching his every word and ready to haul him to jail for running his mouth. If I were in that position, I too would be a good soldier and frequently monologue about the agreed-upon cover story of settling Mars.

[panick21_]

He is involved because DoD asked for people to bid on projects and DoD pays well. SpaceX is part of a contract for missile defense, this is public information. SpaceX delivers the sat bus, as far as I know. But this isn't all that big of a contract. I would have to look up the details again, but this is public, you can go find it.

Why would he since 20+ years talk about Mars? He went to Mars Society conventions long before he wasn't even remotely famous. If he cared about SDI, why not talk about it, its not that controversial. If it was an interest of his, nothing stops him from talking about it. You think he openly talks about Ukraine, trans issues, Israel and almost everything else that's controversial. But mentioning SDI is somehow to controversial? What?

> probably handlers who are watching his every word

You are disagreeing with every journalist who has interacted with Musk. And tons of other people who have interacted with him. In fact its the opposite, its a whole thing that Musk can't shut the fuck up even if he should by any reasonable definition. Have you done literally any research on this topic?

> If I were in that position, I too would be a good soldier and frequently monologue about the agreed-upon cover story of settling Mars.

What the fuck are you even talking about? 'Agreed up on' with who? People from the Starwars days are very open about what they want and thinking that its a good idea to continue that. They talk openly about it.

Musk talking and pushing these ideas publicly that would be a good thing for them. Because the people that need to be convinced are the decision makers at DoD and the congress. If Musk used his lobbying power to push these ideas, people like Griffin would welcome that. But Musk doesn't, because he doesn't really care. And he rather lobbies for Mars.

Of course if he is part of an ongoing DoD project then he would be under NDA for that project and couldn't talk about it. That's not a conspiracy, that just how DoD contracting works. But SpaceX has not started bidding on such contracts until recently.

You just creating a conspiracy where non exists. The whole conspiracy doesn't even make sense. You don't need Mars as a smoke-screen, you can just say 'we build rockets in order to support DoD and NASA and gain commercial contracts as to make money', that is what other rocket companies do. Talking about Mars in 2002 made Musk look like a delusional idiot.

[mullingitover]

> People from the Starwars days are very open about what they want and thinking that its a good idea to continue that. They talk openly about it.

Big picture yes, but definitely not the actual details. And maybe you're right, maybe Musk is a true believer. I just think that I can't possibly know what's the truth or not when, if this project is real it would be treated like the biggest state secret in history with plenty of efforts to obfuscate what's actually happening. In WWII we intentionally let people die to protect the fact that Enigma had been cracked, and keeping this program secret would be at least as important to national security.

> But SpaceX has not started bidding on such contracts until recently.

Literally the first thing that SpaceX ever tried to launch was for a DoD contract[1]. Maybe not a big one, but they go way back with the DoD, before they had any serious prospects. So they started out with DoD, and the second they got a single solitary atom into orbit they got a 1.6 billion dollar contract with NASA. Who was the NASA administrator when they got that contract? Oh that's right: Michael D. Griffin.

[1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20060048219/downloads/20...

[panick21_]

> Literally the first thing that SpaceX ever tried to launch was for a DoD contract[1]

I was talking about sat contracts, not rockets.

This was the first and so far only one (outside of Starshield): https://spacenews.com/spacex-l3harris-win-space-development-...

And again, non of this is secret, so I have no idea what you are talking about.

And SpaceX just delivers the sat bus, not any of the other missile related stuff.

This is a minor sideshow for SpaceX.

> Big picture yes, but definitely not the actual details.

People don't talk in detail about national security projects ... shocker.

Everything you are arguing is just typical conspiracy theory 'coincidence I THINK NOT' type of argument. You have absolutely nothing even remotely solid. So Ill show you how its done:

> In 1991, Griffin was the president and CTO of Orbital Sciences

and then

> in December 2008, NASA awarded SpaceX and Orbital Sciences

COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT! Orbital got 300 million $ more then SpaceX for doing LESS!!!!!!

Northrop Grumman has since absorbed Orbital.

> SDA industry partners now include SpaceX, L3Harris Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Ball Aerospace and General Dynamics.

AHAHAHAHAH COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!