Just before two minutes into flight,
the exhaust plume out of the base of the rocket sorta went asymmetrical.
You could tell it was no longer as symmetric as it had been, and
a few seconds after that it started a slow tumble and then exploded.
>> That's right,
the SpaceX Starship rocket exploded mere minutes after it launched.
It's been described as the world's large and most powerful rocket, but
it failed midair after clearing the launch pad during a test flight this morning.
Now, just to give you a few more details about it, SpaceX's Starship,
the most powerful rocket ever built, although, I mean, it exploded, but
nonetheless took off from a launch pad on the coast of South Texas on Thursday at
09:28 A.M Eastern time, but exploded midair before stage separation.
Thursday's launch marked the vehicle's historic first test flight.
Now, the flight reached its highest point, which was 24.2 miles above the ground,
and the explosion occurred about four minutes after liftoff.
And that's according to SpaceX, which, of course, is led by Elon Musk,
who seems to be on Twitter all day.
So that could be part of the problem, I don't know.
But for some reason, reporters over at CBS really felt the need to spin this as
a massive victory for Elon Musk.
>> Come on.
>> No, I'm not kidding.
I'll provide the receipts right now in fact, let's watch.
>> We call it a failure at the top of the show.
It's really maybe a successful failure is one way to put it.
I mean, it's the first flight of a rocket this big, biggest rocket ever built,
and the fact that they got it up at all was fairly impressive.
>> People who are watching it when you say, it's hard for
people to reconcile it didn't work with it was successful even if it didn't work.
>> Yeah, but failure, as we know, for most things that are hard to do,
the road to success includes a lot of failure.
>> Sure. >> That's how you get there.
>> That's how you get there.
>> [LAUGH] So the rich and the powerful must always be fluffed on corporate media.
>> Dude, it is incredible.
Look, I am not discounting the I mean,
this is not an easy thing to accomplish, right?
So I'm not trying to minimize that, but can CBS relax for a second?
>> Yeah, look here.
>> You know what? This was a successful failure.
>> [INAUDIBLE] Successful failure lines.
I mean, that's so corporate media.
>> [INAUDIBLE] it is.
>> Right?
And you know what else was the largest of its kind?
The Titanic.
And if they were around back then, mainstream media would be like, well,
to be fair to the corporation that owns the Titanic,
it was a bit of a successful failure.
I mean, they got it in the water, and it did hit the iceberg, I mean,
the iceberg also got damage.
Okay, so the spin is unbelievable.
So these goofballs, the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, etc,
they build these rockets in the shape of penises, let's be honest, right?
The bezos one is like, it's the most phallic thing I have ever seen.
>> No, I totally get that, but
don't they have to be isn't it like an aerodynamic thing?
>> No, no, they have to be phallic, I get it, right?
>> Yeah.
>> But the Bezos one has a head, anyways.
>> Just the tip.
No, [LAUGH] it has the tip, but it has the shaft as well.
Anyways, but then corporate media comes along and they're like,
look at that big, beautiful rocket.
>> It's so powerful.
>> You know what?
It blew up, but that's good, those things are supposed to blow at some point.
[LAUGH] That's a successful failure right there.
Look, now, the essence of this story, look, guys,
we've been told our whole life this what I call great man myth, right?
And there are these great men, and they are the leaders of industry, and
they are the leaders of our government, and they are so smart and successful and
amazing, right?
Even their failures are successful.
Well, now Elon Musk has accidentally lifted the curtain, and
we could all see them because Elon Musk is so visible.
He's tweeting every thought.
We see exactly what he's doing.
And you're like, wait, you're supposed to be running Tesla,
and that stock is crashing.
You're supposed to be running SpaceX, and that thing's literally blowing up.
And then Twitter is a mess.
It's an unbelievable mess.
And you overpaid by 20 or $30 billion.
The mask is off.
The great men myth is corporate media telling you to bow your
head to the rich and the powerful.
>> You're absolutely right.
And there are real consequences to that, right?
Because about ten years ago, the government started privatizing space
exploration, which is what paved the way for
someone like Elon Musk to pursue what he's pursuing with SpaceX.
So some people are just blinded by their weird obsession and undying love for
Elon Musk.
But it's really important to understand what's motivating Elon Musk to do
this in the first place.
He's not doing it, he's not engaging in space exploration for the good of mankind.
He's interested in extracting resources from space to make him even more wealthy.
So I wanna give you a little bit of background because I think this is
actually the most interesting part of the story.
I would much rather have NASA rather than this weird public private
partnership thing that they're going for now.
I'd rather have the government pursue this because if there are benefits to space
exploration, there's more likelihood of it being democratized as opposed to having
private corporations take over and reap the benefits of whatever they do in space.
And so why exactly do people like Elon Musk and
Jeff Bezos want to do space exploration?
Well, it turns out that there are some resources that they might wanna extract,
something known as helium 3, that could be a fuel source here on planet Earth.
So that's part of it.
Now, Obama signed into law something that makes it possible for
private industry to go into space and
extract resources for their own personal profits.
So, again, this was a 2015 law.
It's known as and it does conflict with a treaty that we signed,
in my opinion, that would not allow for any individual country or
any individual entity to own property in space.
And the argument here is, no, but the 2015 law that Kevin McCarthy proposed,
it passed and Obama signed it doesn't conflict
because extracting resources is not the same as extracting property or
owning property in space, which I don't know how that actually plays out.
So the law was passed in May of 2015.
It allows US Industries to engage in the commercial exploration and
exploitation of space resources.
As Wired wrote at the time,
perhaps the most significant part are measures allowing US citizens,
meaning businesses let's keep it real, to engage in the commercial exploration and
exploitation of space resources, with examples including water and minerals.
The right to exploit resources covers anything in space that isn't alive.
So if a commercial exploration team discovers microbial life,
they can't exploit it for profit.
But not only individuals, but also corporations like SpaceX,
including those that are not wholly US owned qualify as US citizens for
the purpose of mineral exploitation in space.
That is what this is about.
So for everyone who's like, we really want SpaceX to succeed,
SpaceX wants to succeed to make Elon Musk even more wealthy than he already is by,
again, extracting resources from space for profit.
And by the way, you're about to hear from a NASA lawyer kind of celebrating this.
Okay, so let's take a look at the next video.
>> How do you get companies motivated to.
>> Right. >> To these activities in space?
And if they can't take ownership and profit,
then they are not gonna be motivated to go in space and to do these activities.
>> Right. >> They have to have some sort of return
on the, going into space is expensive, but,
the the real expense really is the transportation costs.
>> Right. >> So they needed to know, hey,
there's a return for me to invest all of this money and
to actually get investors to want to invest in these activities.
>> Right. >> Yeah, exactly.
>> Yeah, its capitalism works.
>> Does it?
So, look, I'm a capitalist, but I don't think this is capitalism.
This I think, this is corporatism.
So, for example, in that NPR fight that Elon Musk had, people realized,
wait, Elon Musk has gotten a lot more government subsidies,
especially for SpaceX than NPR ever did.
And so he's got about $5 billion.
So here's how capitalism actually works.
If you were to or anybody were to give Elon Musk or SpaceX or
any of these companies $5 billion, you would own a giant chunk of them.
So if they were to have the proper motivations to go to space and
exploit the minerals, well, okay, I get it, right.
And they got to make a profit, that's okay.
But then we, the American taxpayer, would get a huge percentage of those profits for
having put in $5 billion.
But that's not how things are working these days.
No, we have corporatism.
So these corporations just bribe a couple of government officials, they call them
campaign contributions, and then they go, here have the 5 billion for free.
Don't worry about giving the American taxpayer back anything.
Well, what the hell?
That's not how it's supposed to work at all.
And guys, so are there some CEOs, entrepreneurs, etc, that are amazing?
Of course, like Steve Jobs was an amazing marketer, amazing innovator, etc.
Rupert Murdoch is obviously a sith lord from a different planet and
one of the most evil men that have ever lived, but respect, he's a killer, and
he's a good business person, okay?
Even if you hate him.
>> Definitely hate him.
>> Yeah, but Elon Musk, but even Murdoch, his dad owned media companies,
and Elon Musk, his dad owned Emerald Mines.
Then he went to Silicon Valley where people were tripping over
billions of dollars, and then the government gives them billions of dollars.
So they're not these amazing, spectacular humans.
They're making massive mistakes right in front of our eyes.
SpaceX is the least of it.
I know rockets blow up sometimes, right?
>> Yeah.
>> But social media platforms aren't supposed to blow up the way Twitter
is, right?
And you're not supposed to lose $20 to $30 billion, obviously,
right in front of all of our eyes, if you're a genius business person.
There's so much propaganda posing as journalism here in America.
>> And don't forget all the issues that have come up in regard to Tesla
spontaneously combusting, the so called driverless features malfunctioning.
Look, the idea that any one person should be the CEO of multiple corporations and
companies and will somehow do a fantastic job at all three or
however many that he's now the head of, it's ridiculous, it's ridiculous.
Look, I'm not the CEO of anything.
I don't have the bandwidth to spend that much time on Twitter.
It is mind boggling how much time that guy spends on Twitter.
So here's the thing, right, so you want to be CEOs of three companies, no problem.
Stock market, you should take that into account and go, okay, well,
I don't know that he could do all those jobs at once, and
those are three pretty giant companies, right?
Okay, so no problem.
The market will take care of that, right?
Except that we have, again, the corporate media doing this mythology nonstop where
they get people to believe, no, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Elon is so amazing.
He's such a mythical creature.
He could do all three at once and do it brilliantly.
>> Even when he's failing, he's winning.
>> Yeah, and do you know that he sleeps sometimes at the office, and
he sleeps at the warehouse, and he's this amazing guy, Elon Musk.
>> We heard that about Sam Bankman Freed as well, by the way.
>> And now, of course, he's in prison.
So don't believe the hype.
Last thing is that they're turning into comic book villains here, right?
That plotline that Anna read you is straight out of don't look up.
You remember the movie on Netflix, Great Adam McKay movie.
They wanted to exploit the minerals from space and that's why we all, okay,
I don't wanna do a spoiler alert, okay, I love the movie.
But I mean, they're hilarious.
They're hilarious.
Artist imitating fake, real life real life is imitating art.
It's all going in circles.
And guys, one last thing, look, it even affected me,
because I remember hearing many years ago,
before we knew how much of a fraud Elon Musk was, where he is,
he's building these spaceships so we can live on Mars because of climate change.
He's worried about climate change, and I remember thinking,
solving climate change on this planet is very difficult, but
about a billion times easier than living on Mars.
Mars is like, in a worst case scenario, earth would look like Mars, so
why the hell would we go to Mars?
You wanna go for scientific exploration, great, I'm totally in favor of it, right?
You wanna pretend we're gonna live there and that you're building a backup planet.
No, that's insane.
But I remember thinking, I don't know, everybody says Elon Musk is a genius and
he's got these multibillion dollar maybe he don't understand something I don't
understand.
>> Yeah, I don't know.
>> I mean, Silicon Valley told us that everything that they were putting out into
the world was going to increase democracy.
It was gonna democratize information and make everything better,
make life better for all of us.
>> How's that working out for us?
So don't believe the hype.
These are regular human beings who have certain different advantages and so-
>> And personal interests.
>> Yes. >> And
I think that's what gets left out of the discussion which is why I brought up
the actual motivating factors for someone like Elon Musk.
He's not doing this out of the kindness of his own heart.
He's not doing it to save humanity.
He's doing it because there might be some resources in space that he can extract for
his own personal profit, that's what this is about.
>> And guys, again,
there are wealthy people who do good things in the world, etc.
But remember, Elon Musk started in the media mythology as a left wing savior.
He was going to tackle climate change through electric cars and
giving us a second planet to live on and these kind of insane mythology, right?
And now he's a right wing savior.
Guys, he isn't a right wing or a left wing savior.
You know who he cares about?
Himself.
>> Thousand percent.
Of course, come on, don't believe corporate media.
Their job is to sell you marketing for the rich and the powerful.
And that CBS story was a perfect illustration of that.
>> Yep.
>> What a successful failure that explosion was.