How can it be a good idea to have such an important company to national security public?
Last thing you want is funds having their say on how to run the company. Didn't work well with Boeing either.
Last thing you want is funds having their say on how to run the company. Didn't work well with Boeing either.
And who exactly do you think owns 58% of SpaceX that Mr. Musk does not own? [1] It's not like being private means the company is not owned by funds or they have no say on how to run it. What does mean they have no say on how to run it, though, is that although Mr. Musk owns only 42% of SpaceX, he controls 78% of voting rights [again, 1]. Given that he already has a complex scheme to have full control over public Tesla [2], I doubt if SpaceX goes public, Mr. Musk will lose his control over the company.
> How can it be a good idea to have such an important company to national security public?
It doesn't really matter who "owns" the company, it matters more who is on the board and who have most voting rights. Anyway, if national security is of any concern, better ask why Lockheed Martin or Raytheon are public.
1. https://archive.is/7jbAd 2. https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/how-elon-musk-con...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons
But seriously, while I’m sure a lot of people in the government are mad at Elon’s hot takes, the government has just as much leverage over SpaceX as they did over Von Braun. In either case they could have turned the screws; the only leverage Elon has is that SpaceX delivers what nobody else can. Which was also true of Von Braun. (Jack Parsons, it turned out, wasn’t worth the headache in the long run; his story has a sad ending.)
They've made themselves important by working very hard... It's interesting how the narrative switches immediately from mocking someone for trying something impossible to being worried about them being a danger to national security. It's very bad for the country that some people seem to think there is nothing in between. You're either irrelevant or you're too important.
> Last thing you want is funds having their say on how to run the company. Didn't work well with Boeing either.
We're a couple decades at least away from SpaceX reaching a Boeing-like position.
Well, it is not going public.