Elon Musk Dominates Outer Space Like Nobody Has Before

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

We're very excited about this recording. It's a crossover episode with Bloomberg's weekly Elon Inc. podcast. So we're all about Elon today. And to get into that, Tracy, do you remember our interview with the Ukraine Post CEO?

Tracy Alloway (0:38)

Yes, I do. Igor Smolensky. That was a really interesting episode for a variety of reasons. One, because I just really enjoy talking about logistics.

But secondly, one of the things that stood out to both of us, I think, from that conversation was when he was talking about how they're using Starlink in Ukraine. And also the idea that, you know, if they were ever to redesign the postal service from scratch, they would avoid traditional internet and just use all Starlink.

Joe Weisenthal (1:05)

No, that was like a very eye-opening moment for me. And I feel like when it comes to Elon Musk, obviously it feels like, I don't know, 40% of the attention on him is related to Tesla.

Another 40% is Twitter or X. And then we're aware that there's like a bunch of all these other companies like Neuralink and Grok and SpaceX. But SpaceX and Starlink, that's a huge deal because my understanding or my sense is that like, he is just dominating the skies.

Tracy Alloway (1:37)

Yeah, and that's kind of the cool business as well, right?

Joe Weisenthal (1:39)

It seems like the cool business.

Tracy Alloway (1:40)

It's like rockets that can be reused. If you ever see the satellites launching into the sky, the Starlink ones, they're really beautiful.

Satellite internet is really interesting to me, partly because of when I was in Hong Kong and you know they had the really strict COVID rules and they would basically send you to a government facility that was extremely limited if you came down with COVID. You had to have satellite internet in there because there was no government internet. So you had to get a little box and bring it with you if you were spending like three or four weeks there.

Joe Weisenthal (2:10)

Wait, you never had to go to one of those.

Tracy Alloway (2:12)

I know a lot of people who did.

Joe Weisenthal (2:13)

And they had to bring their own box?

Tracy Alloway (2:15)

Yeah, because otherwise there was either no internet or it was so poor that effectively there was no internet.

Joe Weisenthal (2:20)

I had not realized that element. But it is pretty wild, like, okay, here's one company and it just totally dominates satellite communication. I know it dominates rocket launches. And historically space was the domain of governments, right? Space was the domain of the military of any government and or NASA or the NASA equivalent.

And now we're in this world where there's one individual and basically one company that is just completely dominating space. And like I said, you know, I think people talk about Tesla and they talk about Twitter, but I feel like SpaceX deserves more attention and I want to learn more about SpaceX.

Tracy Alloway (2:58)

No, absolutely. This is something I hadn't really, I guess, internalized until recently, but the degree to which NASA basically opened up space to private companies is kind of remarkable compared to the way it was in the past. So absolutely, I think this is something we should talk about.

Joe Weisenthal (3:14)

Right, so we've wanted to do a space slash SpaceX slash Starlink episode for a while to really understand this company and how it fits into the broader Elon Musk empire. So I'm very excited to say today, we have a bunch of perfect guests. They are all our colleagues at Bloomberg. But first up, we are gonna be speaking with Ashlee Vance who reports on all kinds of cool tech stuff for us here at Bloomberg. Sort of like the future cutting edge pieces. Every time Ashlee writes an article, it's just about some crazy mad scientist, usually out in the Bay Area doing anything wild. He's written a biography of Elon Musk and his more recent book is called When the Heavens Went On Sale, The Misfits and Geniuses, Racing to Put Space Within Reach. So the perfect guest to talk space. So Ashlee Vance, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Ashlee Vance (4:03)

Thank you for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (4:04)

I'm aware that SpaceX exists, that it's in the business of private rockets and satellites and all that stuff. But like how big is SpaceX? Or maybe how far ahead is SpaceX versus the competition?