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Tesla is often heralded as Elon Musk’s premiere company, the business at the foundation of all his other businesses. But as Tesla has struggled and lost market share, it’s Musk’s other big company, SpaceX, that keeps surging ahead of the competition.
SpaceX is trying to add the first commercial spacewalk to its list of accomplishments, and is set to eventually bail out embattled rival Boeing by retrieving astronauts stranded by its faulty Starliner.
On this week’s episode of Elon Inc, reporters Loren Grush and Bruce Einhorn break down how all of this is unfolding and debate if there’s any competition left for SpaceX in this field. Host David Papadopoulos is also joined by reporter Kurt Wagner and editor Sarah Frier to discuss the latest development over at X. Why is Donald Trump all of a sudden posting again on his richest fan’s troubled platform? Will the arrest of Telegram Chief Executive Officer Pavel Durov have any consequences for Musk and X? And why did Diddy invest in it? As always with Musk, there’s a lot to talk about.
- Newly unveiled documents show that the likes of Bill Ackman and Sean Combs were backers of Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Will they get their money’s worth being involved in the worst hung loan since the financial crisis? Frier suggests the motivation could go beyond simply monetary returns and instead consist of accessibility and influence.
- Speaking of influence, Trump’s X account is now posting regularly and the increased use of “caps lock” and insults indicate the Republican’s own fingers may be on the keyboard.
- Durov’s arrest seemingly has Musk worried about the future of social media. But Wagner points out that Musk’s plan for content moderation, such as it is, is generally do whatever is legally allowed and take down stuff that is not.
- Finally, Grush and Einhorn detail just how much NASA—and the stranded astronauts—dodged a bullet when they resisted pressure to only allow Boeing to transport goods and people to and from the International Space Station in 2014.
About the show: Each week, listen in as host David Papadopoulos (and sometimes Max Chafkin) convenes a panel of Bloomberg journalists tracking Elon Musk’s companies and the surprising ways they intersect, breaking down his latest moves and what they could mean for us all.
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