Do we gotta do this again? Musk insanity

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I would like to say that I get tired with the insanity that surrounds Elon Musk and his portfolio of companies.

But the truth is, he is a charter member of the Billionaire Victims Club, and ever since the Delaware Chancery Court ruled against Tesla for his ridiculous $50B plus pay package that was conferred on him in 2018, Musk and Tesla has tried to circumvent that decision by having another shareholder vote (and the Chancery judge swatting that down as not applicable), and even moving the incorporation from Delaware, a jurisdiction that is very protective of shareholder rights (a good thing) to Texas, that presumably has less protections. But the 2018 package was granted under Delaware rules, and it remains under Delaware rules.

Oops.

So, to combat this, Tesla last week granted 96M shares ($29B of value) to Musk as a "retention bonus"[1].

From the article (gifted link):

The company approved a grant of 96 million shares for Mr. Musk, which he could tap after two years of service in a “senior leadership role” at Tesla. The mercurial billionaire, whose business empire includes rockets, artificial intelligence, brain implants and more, hinted last month that he wanted more shares in Tesla, on top of his 13 percent stake, to prevent his ouster by “activist” shareholders.

Wait, the company is so worried that he will leave, so they are building a "velvet coffin" to keep him? But they are worried that he will leave and that will negatively impair the value of the company.

The incomparable Patrick Boyle, the dryest financial commentator on You Tube has a great 33 minute video that is worth the watch:

In my view, Musk leaving, and Tesla becoming what it really is, a boring automaker; just one of the market and its valuation will drop to be in line with the other majors (even though they have a very limited list of products, and very slow model development cycles) and increasing pressure in the EV space.

But what about SpaceX?

The 5 year review and look forward

On Youtube, the outstanding channel Common Sense Skeptic has just celebrated 5 years of their technical, devastating debunking, refutation, and rational analyses of the claims of Musk about "Starship". You know that mega rocket that has delivered just grams[2] of payload to not quite orbit after 9 attempts?

Still, watching them skewer Musk and his ludicrous pronouncements by doing simple mathematics, notwithstanding the fact that Starship has yet to successfully reach an orbital trajectory. By now, it should be shuttling back and forth to the Moon, but it still is not much more than very expensive fireworks that rain down debris awfully close to populated islands and America's dangly bits[3].

Hell, on June 19, 2025, the latest Starship was being tested on a test stand when ... BOOM.

SpaceX's Starship has exploded once again — adding to a growing list of setbacks for the company's rocket.

The upper stage of the rocket, the largest ever built, was undergoing routine testing to prepare for its 10th test flight at SpaceX's South Texas Starbase site on Wednesday night (June 18) when it "suffered a catastrophic failure and exploded," local authorities wrote on Facebook.

The gigantic fireball adds to a string of recent headaches for the rocket's upper stages. The ship exploded mid-flight during two previous test flights in January and March, and fell to pieces during an earlier-than-planned reentry in May. (link)

Still, that is just details, although quite costly, it is dwarfed by the impracticality of actually transporting enough people and materials to Mars to make a go at a serious colony there.

That's where the Common Sense Skeptic (CSS) enters stage right. Their history has been to focus on the claims and try to divine what actually would need to be done/accomplished to actually achieve the ambitions.

In short: It isn't going to happen. Musk likely read too much Science Fiction as a formative teen. Too much Heinlein, and too little hard science. And it is clear that his fantasy of Asimov, Heinlein, Pohl, Herbert, et. al. has warped his thinking.

Anyhow, one of the drivers behind the writing of this piece is a reflection on their 5th anniversary, and a three-part look at where SpaceX is, mapped to what Musk says on stage.

And by on stage, much of the clips from this series were taken from Musk talking in front of the SpaceX staff. You know, actual rocket scientists. People who know how to use a calculator and to calculate a Hohman Transfer Orbit (although it is amusing to watch Musk explain launch windows to actual rocket scientists multiple times. So much cringe)

Anyhow, here is part one, and I hope it inspires you to watch the other two. You will come away understanding why colonizing Mars ain't gonna happen:

I hope you liked that and give the channel a subscription. They also skewer Musk on the shit he says about Tesla.

Summary

Musk is surrounded by an ecosystem of weird superfans who will make excuses for him, but he is not brilliant, he doesn't design the rockets or the cars, he is an epic shit-poster, and he is basically "the money".

His hard right shift and his alignment to Trump, that really began when his daughter transitioned broke him. It all seems to go back to that, and his "divorced dad energy." I have plenty of people who tell me that before that, he was an innovator, and visionary, but the truth is that he was always an insecure asshat racist fuckwit.

I hope you enjoyed this.

1 - A velvet coffin is a strategy to keep a key employee by giving them enough of a time bound equity grant that they won't leave. It sounds better than "golden handcuffs

2 - A single banana in the payload chamber. But it failed to reach orbital trajectory and it burned up before splashing into the Indian Ocean. Oops.

3 - Florida