Dear Friends,
It seems to me, it would be a disaster for mankind, should the US administrative state seize control of Space X’s Starship rocket system. The brainiacs in the bureaucracy have claimed it’s impossible to build an orbital class reusable rocket for decades. The Falcon 9 has proven the concept and now the Starship program is expanding the idea, to make a rapidly reusable orbital rocket. With the added capability of delivering almost 200 tons to anywhere on Earth in less than an hour. That’s what’s caught the eye of Sauron. Now the DOD is talking about taking over the Starship program as a matter of national security. Which would make the Starship program into an exercise in futility. Because innovation and outside the box thinking is verboten in bureaucracy.
Boeing is the acme of a company that’s gone from stellar to quotidian. Innovation, quality and safety have taken a back seat to politics. As is always the case in bureaucracies. High nails get hammered down. If we accept this logic, once the administrative state usurps the Starship program, we can expect a series of failures, culminating in the end of the program… due to the experts deeming it impossible. Because it is impossible… for people who think math is racist, showing up to work on time is white supremacist and working hard is a form of tyranny. That’s why the administrative state hasn’t delivered a reusable orbital class rocket, let alone a paradigm shattering innovation, like Starship. Their hands in it, would destroy the program, not just slow it.
One reason Space X is able to do the seemingly impossible… is because it’s filled with the John Gaults of the world. The twenty percent that do fifty percent of the work. By their nature they think outside the box, are high nails and are independent. They would flee a typical bureaucracy or be ushered to the door, for putting a staple in the wrong corner, and forgetting the 3 paper clips denoting 3 copies… too often. Such people deliver innovation, complete tasks on time and work diligently… the white supremacists. They’re not ants, being more like cats. As hard to satisfy and they are to self satisfy. The John Gaults of the world change shape so don’t ever fit in anywhere for very long. Bureaucracy requires square pegs only however. So dynamic shapes that morph into and out of toroids don’t fit.
Have you ever noticed that the most inept, lazy and stupid, think they know better than those who build things? I have. You see it when a new hire doesn’t work, but instead complains with arms crossed, how the whole system is set up ass backwards. A system he has no idea about since he was just hired. Give that lout control and he’ll run that business into the ground. Because he couldn’t have built it, since he didn’t. It’s easy to be flippant when you don’t have skin in the game. If there’s a loss here or there, oh well, just raise taxes to cover it. Not in the real world though. Here, a loss needs to be made up out of profit. A failure has costs and stagnation has costs as well. The lazy, inept and stupid couldn’t care less.
When self assured half wits seize the work of another, they reliably run it into the ground, as would happen to the Starship program. They have no skin in the game, are inept and couldn’t have created the program in the first place. With plenty of hubris they feel they can do a much better job than the guy who invented it. So given sufficient political power, they’ll take it over. Then run it into the ground. Emerging with much more wealth, power and prestige than before they ruined a great idea. So the only down side to the egoist opportunity lost. That’s why I say it would be a disaster for the deep state to seize control of the Starship program. A disaster for space X to be sure, and for the administrative state in lost opportunity.. but a bigger disaster for mankind.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
