[JumpCrisscross]

> Trump & Musk will walk out trillionaires

Or in jail. We’re not at the coup stakes of life and death, but we’re also like two months into this Presidency. (For what it’s worth, Trump isn’t currently being coup-ish. That’s been left to the pretender.)

[anonzzzies]

Which is why they are pushing so hard/fast; they need to destroy the right things to make sure they cannot be stopped.

[jordanb]

It doesn't look like they're targeting the right things, given how much they've put into going after the FAA, NHTSA and NOAA. Not exactly dark-state power centers. Rather, they're people who've pissed of Elon specifically.

It seems like they're spending 30% of effort on the areas that are likely to foment a counter-coup and 70% of their time attacking groups they have personal beefs with.

But of course they're not just focusing on the powerless, they're also annoying the powerful enough that I don't see how it ends well for them.

[Tadpole9181]

Haha, yeah, it's not like the president hasn't put in 3 of the SCOTUS judges who give him a 6/9 majority. Or replaced the chief joint of staff and each respective head of every military branch and each respective judge of each military branch. Or the head of the FBI or the director of the FBI. Or the secretary of defense. It's not like he once ordered protesters to be shot for a photo op and had to be stopped by people in those very positions saying "no". That would be crazy.

It's not like he's stopping aid to Ukraine while ruminating on dropping sanctions on our second largest enemy state and repeating word-for-word Kremlin talking points after having a prior relationship with their criminal enterprises for his real estate and an intelligence community espouse the use of foreign power to influence his election outcomes. That would be nuts.

It's not like he attempted to overthrow the government when he lost an election 4 years ago, then pardoned the violent criminals who were incarcerated for that act. Or outright saying he will ignore judicial rulings from unfavored judges while making executive orders that change explicitly language in the constitution, with an EO making it illegal for his executive branch employees to oppose his interpretation of law and installing Aparachniks in each agency to report those in non-compliance. That's a loony idea.

It's not like he's destroying all trade partnerships with allies and internal infrastructure/manufacturing investments simultaneously. That would be silly.

[ben_w]

"Stopping" can mean many things.

Reaching the altitude of space is much, much, easier than reaching orbital velocity.

This meant that during the Global War on Terror, people had legitimate questions about if Al Qaida could damage the ISS. The answer then was "no", but amateurs reached the Kármán line in 2004, students in 2019, and the current altitude record holder is 143 km.

I suspect that it is well within the capacity of random drug cartels in the US, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Haiti and Jamaica to destroy a Starship during launch, if they so desired.

A functioning US government is a reason not to do that. Nobody in any of those countries will want to risk Musk asking Trump for a favour in the form of a USSOCOM operation.

Destroy the US federal government, and there may well not be an USSOCOM left afterwards. And so far, DOGE has shown zero regard for the value of who they cut, e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/02/doge-nucl...

[AnimalMuppet]

Destroy a Starship on the pad? Possible. Destroy a Starship during ascent? That's much harder.

There are two problems: You have to have enough greater acceleration that you can catch it, and you have to have good enough targeting (and maneuverability) to actually hit it. Those are highly non-trivial problems.

[ben_w]

You don't have to catch it from behind, just put yourself in it's path and let Starship's own kinetic energy cause the damage with your own velocity being nearly stationary vs the ground at the time.

Aiming is one of the easier things: huge target, multi-gigwatt heat signiature.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Aiming is one of the easier things: huge target, multi-gigwatt heat signiature

You’re describing boost-stage missile intercept. It’s incredibly hard.

[ben_w]

For strategic use against ICBMs, yes.

For an extremely well advertised launch into a predetermined flight path of something which isn't even trying to hide its signature and where you can watch the livestream of the countdown?

Perhaps I'm still underestimating the challenge, but I think boost stage vs Starship is a much less of a challenge than boost stage vs. an actual weapon.

But yeah, given your background, if you say I'm wrong, I know to defer to you on this.

[orwin]

The fact that Musk will probably end up like Hugenberg if nothing changes doesn't make me jump in joy. 2 of every 5 people living in the US don't deserve it (the fifth who voted against and the fifth who can't vote), and I'm quite sad that they will have to bear with it for at least a few months (it took 6 months for Hugenberg to lose his empire and power, but I don't see the long knives happening in the US in the future, so it might take longer). At least the week-long pogrom didn't get a pretty name this time and was quite limited thanks to activists and pissed of neighbours. USians are a lot of things, maybe too passive at times, but cowards they are not.