I knew this was coming and I am still unable to fully process it. The scale of what is going on right now is too much to hold in my gelatinous human mind. I’m only writing about it on my blog because it will likely be the biggest tech news of the year? Maybe? It is still early.
Some pull quotes from the post officially announcing it (worst permalink ever?) are a bit staggering.
With launches every hour carrying 200 tons per flight, Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year, enabling an exciting future where humanity is out exploring amongst the stars.
Again, Musk and Bezos have been speaking about this sort of future for many years. Bezos often said Amazon would have never happened if UPS and FedEX and USPS didn’t exist. SpaceX and Blue Origin are poised to be that foundational freight layer for moving mass to and from Earth to space. But SpaceX is also equipped to go far beyond just moving mass, it is now going to move data via Starlink, set up data-centers, and power AI all over the planet.
Spending ~$40B on Twitter is now a minuscule afterthought. Which is unfortunate because Twitter (and I’m talking about Twitter even pre-Dorsey CEO days) was a real special place. A new social network with the same feature set of Twitter could have been built (especially today) very quickly. But I have to stop even thinking about Twitter… it is very much long dead and will never return in any shape or form.
I’m writing this down for posterity. The next move is that SpaceX buys 1 million robots from Tesla, ensuring Musk’s payday there, and then SpaceX will buy Tesla to enable the solar and automation needs required to build data centers, bases, and cities in the harsh environment of space.