Programmers From The United States

"The fundamental message that consumers should be taking today is that it's financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla. It would be like owning a horse in three years. I mean, fine if you want to own a horse. But you should go into it with that expectation. If you buy a car that does not have the hardware for full self-driving, it is like buying a horse. And the only car that has the hardware for full self-driving is a Tesla."

"Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves. Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Thai navy seals escorted us in — total opposite of wanting us to leave. Water level was actually very low & still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to Cave 5 with no gear, which is obv how the kids got in. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video. You know what, don’t bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it."

"Sending large numbers of people to explore and settle Mars in the decades ahead isn't inevitable, but it is entirely possible. The biggest challenge isn't the engineering and spacecraft, however difficult they may be. Instead, it's making sure that a sustained Mars campaign proceeds as a national priority, and that will happen only if the American people are behind it. We have the opportunity now to make this happen. We might not be so fortunate in the future."

"It would be an incredible adventure. And life needs to be more than just solving every day problems. You need to wake up and be excited about the future"

"The probability of death is quite high on the first [human] mission [to Mars]."

"Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that 'free speech' is actually a $8/mo subscription plan."

"Elon has always been an introvert thinker. So where a lot of people would go to a great party and have a great time and drink and talk about all sorts of things like rugby or sport, you would find Elon had found the person's library and was going through their books."

"Leon’s, I’ll tell you what, Elon, Elon, is not going to buy Twitter. … He’s got himself a mess. He said the other day, ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that. He told me he voted for me.’ So, he’s another bullshit artist. But he’s not going to be buying it."

"Wow, interesting. I didn't think it was possible to look uncool while wearing a leather jacket and telling people to go fuck themselves, but he pulled it off somehow."

"One thing that is important is that, if you have a choice between a lower valuation with someone you really like, or higher valuation with someone you have a question mark about, take the lower valuation."

"Russia's slant on the world appears to have penetrated Musk's mind and he is by far Bellingcat's most famous detractor. Bellingcat's Twitter account has periodically disappeared from site searches and Musk himself often retweets conspiracy theories about the group."

"Elon was wearing thin, I asked him to leave, I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!"

"This is the chance to fulfill a dream."

"I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible."

"Lies can indeed kill and, though there are of course many others, one of the world's most prolific enemies of truth is Elon Musk. He is surely the global far right’s most significant figure, and he holds the world’s largest megaphone."

"We need to figure out how to have the things we love, and not destroy the world."

"My approach is simply to seek out very talented people, ensure that the environment at SpaceX is as motivating & enjoyable as possible and establish clear & measurable objectives."

"I would like to die on Mars; just not on impact."

"Rocket engineering is not like ditch digging. With ditch digging you can get 100 people and dig a ditch, and you will dig it a hundred times as faster if you get 100 people versus one. With rockets, you have to solve the problem of a particular level of difficulty; one person who can solve the problem is worth an infinite number of people who can’t."

"As life’s agents, it’s on our shoulders."

"I think that is a mistake and results in cloudy judgment on important technical issues. They can't tell if something is really good or not, so they just do what everyone else does, assuming it to be the safe bet."

"If you have millions of dollars it changes your lifestyle, and anyone who says differently is talking bullshit. I don’t need to work, from a standard of living point of view, but I do, you know. I work every day and on weekends and I haven’t taken a vacation for years."

"Although I am new in the business, my team is not. I would say that, person for person, there has never been a better rocket company in existence, in history. I don’t think there has ever been a group this talented in one place, in one company, developing a rocket – ever."

"We're adding a triple sign-off for all work done on the launch pad, on flight components, and flight critical GSE. You have a technician, a responsible engineer, and then quality assurance will sign the final, record all information, and take photographs of all the work that was done, and then make sure that all information is put into our quality assurance database, which is reviewed prior to launch."

"It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight ... The most important message I’d like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward. We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that. ... There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport. For my part, I will never give up and I mean never."

"In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a... collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing."

"It's ironic that Elon Musk, the man who has been talking about getting us to Mars should be Putin's messenger for the war in Ukraine, when we're having a really hard time getting our act together on this planet."

""I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary," as Musk famously said in 2008. In the 15 years since, he has revolutionised electric transport, broken world records in space travel, become the wealthiest person in the world, and made more headlines in a week than most tech CEOs make in their careers."

"I'd rather be optimistic and wrong; than pessimistic and right. .. We have planes, trains, automobiles and boats, ... What if there was a fifth mode?"

"[Comments from Christo Grozev of Bellingcat cited by Luce] "Musk is extremely influential. He has a cult following and he's purveying falsehoods. Because of his image among his followers as someone who knows the truth that others can’t see, he is more dangerous than a Trump.""

"So, I think the best analogy for rocket engineers, if you want to create complicated software, you can't run as an integrated whole, or run on the computer it's intended to run on, but, first time you run it, it has to run with no bugs. That's the essence of it. So ... we missed the mark there."

"He would go through two books in one day."

"Musk isn’t promoting liberty; he’s using his power to privilege many of the worst voices in American life."

"We are used to things improving every year; we are used to having a better cell phone next year than this year; a better lap top. We are even used to some basic things, like we expect more from your car in next year’s model than last year’s model. But this is not the case in space; reliability and cost - those are the fundamental parameters of transportation - have not improved."

"If we can build something that is capable of taking people and equipment to Mars, such that it can service a transportation infrastructure for humanity becoming a multi- planet species - which I think is a very, very important objective - then I would consider the mission of SpaceX successful, at that point."

"Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell."

"When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, "Nah, what's wrong with a horse?" That was a huge bet he made, and it worked."

"It doesn’t do a great deal to advance the goal of humanity. I would pay $20 million not to spend six months in Russia. And besides this, my interest is how do we enable many other people to go to space, not necessarily me, personally."

"So even if a fire develops, it can't really attack the particularly vulnerable locations like the pneumatic system or the avionics or the engine bay. We want to be in the situation that even if a fire develops, the rocket just keeps going."

"From a post in the official X profile, 3 November 2025"

"The long term ultimate objective – the holy grail – is we would like to help make life multi-planetary."

"When thinking about starting a business, I think it’s actually better to start in a trough and come to market in a peak, than the other way around. Frankly, if anything does, and it’s almost cliché, space has a long-term future."

"A great deal of bargaining power with suppliers. We are never locked in to anyone."

"We got to the moon, but have never done anything better since. I'm disappointed that we have not made more progress since Apollo. I don't even see a plan that says we're going to do better than Apollo to exceed that goal."

"I want to be able to make sure that we have enough capital to survive at least three consecutive failures. If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one."

"I like to be involved in things that change the world. The Internet did, and space will probably be more responsible for changing the world than anything else. If humanity can expand beyond the Earth, obviously that's where the future is."

"(About Amazon's plan to automate 75% of its operations) It’s insane to think that a human will pack and ship boxes in ten years — it’s game over folks."

"Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions."

"There’s a graveyard of prior attempts, a big graveyard. There’s probably some freshly dug graves just waiting to be filled. Our aspiration is to avoid that destination."

"If nothing else, we are committed to failing in a new way."