Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II

[The Great Zaganza]

fraud is the norm, not the exception, when it comes to anything to do with Pentagon Contracts - that's why it has never passed an Audit in living memory.

 

[JayUtah]

Really? You think it's hard to defraud the government?

Being granted a sole-source contract to develop a lunar lander and then having the government official responsible for the award quit their job and come work for you is a huge red flag. Under normal circumstances that might trigger a suspension of the contract and would certainly trigger a government review. But the plot twist is that the boss buys his way into government, installs himself as some new kind of plenipotentiary official, and (under the guise of eliminating waste and fraud) eliminates all the investigations into his companies. Not fraudy at all!

The contract schedule had Musk's HLS landing on the Moon unmanned in 2024.

When it's operational, Starship will mainly be used for getting large cargoes into LEO. Musk hopes that it will make Starlink profitable.

Telling the government that when it's finished you can easily convert your Starship into a lunar lander is one way to convince them to give you billions of dollars to develop it. And for a while you can convince them that everything you're doing for Starship is really a step toward a lunar lander because too many people think a spaceship is a spaceship is a spaceship. But the industry knows how to develop spacecraft, and when the industry points out that you aren't hitting any of the milestones in lunar lander development but you're hitting quite a lot of milestones for a development path for your own private commercial purposes, then you can only fall back for a short time on the prospect that you're just so much better and smarter than everyone else, and that you're doing it a special way that only you know.

To be sure, applying the know-how you developed in fulfilling a government contract to your own operations is not illegal or unethical. In fact, it's one of the reasons we do government contracts and one of the ways government stimulates innovation. But you have to tell the government up front that you plan to do this. And you have to carefully account for the government spending so that it's not going directly to your own profit without the government's permission. And then, of course, you have to actually satisfy the government's requirements no matter what other commercial goals you are pursuing.

It's a straw-man argument to suggest that if what we said about SpaceX were true, then the contract would have been pulled and another contractor appointed instead. It's rarely that direct. When this sort of thing happens, you just relax the sole-source award and get an additional contractor. This is what happened with the descent engine on the Apollo lunar lander. The original contractor wasn't meeting milestones, so an additional contractor was brought on and they both worked in parallel until one of them produced a working engine. Here, Blue Origin has been added as a contractor for the first Artemis lunar lander and the project has been converted to a direct competition between them. The first one to produce a lander that meets NASA's specs for flight test gets to fly on Artemis III. At this point we don't know who it will be, and the mission plan leaves open the possibility that both will fly and be tested side by side.

 

[Aridas]

fraud is the norm, not the exception, when it comes to anything to do with Pentagon Contracts - that's why it has never passed an Audit in living memory.

That's a bit off an a manner that's a little stronger than a quibble. The Pentagon fails audits for a variety of reasons that simply don't automatically indicate fraud, even if some of those structural weaknesses may easily be exploited to commit fraud. Going a bit further, it would be extremely surprising if there wasn't fraud involved at least some of the time, but that doesn't make fraud the norm. There's plenty of cause to be unhappy, in short, regardless of how prevalent fraud actually is, but fraud is not the reason why it fails those audits.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

your link makes it sound worse, not better.
anyone who ever complained about Fraud or Waste in any Government Agency should not be able to pass a DOD budget without massive extra transparency and accounting measures without being hit by lighting.

The Pentagon is a Mess, and the biggest problem is that no one can say how big a mess it is.

 

[Aridas]

your link makes it sound worse, not better.
anyone who ever complained about Fraud or Waste in any Government Agency should not be able to pass a DOD budget without massive extra transparency and accounting measures without being hit by lighting.

The Pentagon is a Mess, and the biggest problem is that no one can say how big a mess it is.

I'm not going to argue about better or worse, really. That wasn't my point, after all. My point was simply that "fraud" is not the reason why it has been failing audits. You are welcome to the takeaway that things are even worse than you had thought, either way, because yes, the Pentagon's accounting IS a mess and has been for a long time. If they are indeed actually working to clean it up as they claim to be, that is a good thing and I find it entirely understandable that fixing the accumulated problems takes time, but that's no excuse for the problems in the first place.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I think it's baseline fraudulent to spend taxpayer money in a way that can't be traced - lawmakers have a fiduciary duty to the money they order collected. It doesn't really matter if it is wasted through fraud, mismanagement or lack organization. Since the opaqueness of the DOD budget spending has been known for decades it is a fraud on the taxpayer to spend money without being able to say precisely for what.
I'm getting a strong sense that no real effort is being made to remedy the situation, as it would make the scope of the problem public.

 

[Aridas]

I think it's baseline fraudulent to spend taxpayer money in a way that can't be traced - lawmakers have a fiduciary duty to the money they order collected. It doesn't really matter if it is wasted through fraud, mismanagement or lack organization. Since the opaqueness of the DOD budget spending has been known for decades it is a fraud on the taxpayer to spend money without being able to say precisely for what.
I'm getting a strong sense that no real effort is being made to remedy the situation, as it would make the scope of the problem public.

As noted in that link and elsewhere, notable effort IS being made to remedy the situation. Likely not least because of the Congressional mandate for them to pass audits by 2028. There's certainly reason for cynicism, yes, given the sheer number and scope of the issues and how even eliminating an enormous 20 of the serious issues would still leave plenty of room for accounting problems, but "no real effort" is highly inaccurate by any objective standard.

Now, this is probably far more than enough on this tangent, given the limited relevance to Musk or his companies. Discussing fraud accusations against Musk's companies like these would be far more on topic.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

And a basic testbed design that has actually launched is quite a bit more too. In fact I'd argue that it's more more, if you follow me.

No it isn't, it's an empty aluminium shell.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

NASA gave him about $3 billion to build HLS. Musk is on record as saying that each time a Starship blows up it costs SpaceX $100 million. So he's burned through the best part of a third of the contract just in launches and ignoring all the design work and engineering of support infrastructure. Can he fulfil the contract with fewer than twenty more launches? I think probably not.

I think this is why he's selling some SpaceX shares to the public. He needs quite a large injection of cash to fund development of Starship. (as well as to pay off the debts incurred by Twitter and xAI).

He needs bigger fools to sell shares to before the whole house of cards falls apart. Hence the bullying of NASDAQ over stock listing rules.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Which mission schedule? Elon's pie-in-the-sky schedule that he spouts off without thinking? Or the actual published mission schedule that they are really genuinely following?


As they are utterly irrelevant to the fuel and cargo problems. Right? So why are they doing them?


Again, if you have some kind of insider knowledge into NASA's reasoning for the change in the Artemis schedule, I'd love for you to share it. As far as I know that reasoning hasn't been published.

Oh, so SpaceX have a sooper-seekrit schedule that they are showing nobody, but are completely keeping to schedule. Tell me, was it written up by George Glass?

They have yet to achieve the first step on NASA's schedule. You know, the one they were contracted to achieve and wrote up themselves.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Yeah but I don't think he's dumb enough to blatantly and deliberately defraud the US government for no reason. Especially since doing so would require a level of cunning that he has never demonstrated.

You've forgotten DOGE already?

 

[EHocking]

You've forgotten DOGE already?

Google result: “how musk gained from doge”

• Securing Government Contracts: Under his tenure, SpaceX secured $5.92 billion of a $13.7 billion military satellite contract and saw increased potential for Starlink in federal projects.
• Reducing Oversight: DOGE disrupted federal agencies, including shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which had investigated loan policies at Tesla.
• "Subsidy Harvesting": Analysts noted that DOGE allowed Musk to cut waste while positioning his firms to receive more of the $38 billion in government funding he had previously accumulated, such as influencing FAA contracts for SpaceX.
• Restructuring Federal Data: Musk’s team consolidated federal data and dismantled oversight, which reports suggest he intends to leverage for his private AI ventures.
  Al Jazeera +4

 

[arthwollipot]

Really? You think it's hard to defraud the government?

The American government, probably not. You may have a point there.

 

[arthwollipot]

You've forgotten DOGE already?

You think DOGE required cunning? Did you see him when they gave him a chainsaw? That wasn't cunning, that was bull-in-a-china-shop wanton destruction. Anyway, he didn't personally do a damn thing except pay a bunch of script kiddies to hack things to pieces.

 

[jeremyp]

No it isn't, it's an empty aluminium shell.

It's an empty stainless steel shell.

 

[Aridas]

You think DOGE required cunning? Did you see him when they gave him a chainsaw? That wasn't cunning, that was bull-in-a-china-shop wanton destruction. Anyway, he didn't personally do a damn thing except pay a bunch of script kiddies to hack things to pieces.

And what kind of "cunning" do you think is actually needed to defraud the government? Musk's demonstrated actions are completely in line with him having such "cunning," regardless. We aren't talking about something that high intelligence is even required to do, after all, though having high intelligence and low morality/respect for others does make it more common to attempt and succeed for a time. Going further, Musk's companies had quite a few investigations into them ongoing that DOGE very much interfered with. That there were so many and that Musk happily worked to target those investigating them with DOGE when he had the chance are both things that seriously undermine your position.

 

[Bogative]

Meanwhile.

Falcon 9 achieved it's 600th landing.

Tesla sold 54% of all electric vehicles in the United States in the 1st quarter, more than the 27 other manufacturers combined.



The walls are closing in on the scamming fraudster, just you wait.

 

[plague311]

Tesla sold 54% of all electric vehicles in the United States in the 1st quarter, more than the 27 other manufacturers combined.

Didn't US sales fall by like 8% during Q1 or something? Answer? Yes, but every other EV fell harder:

In the first quarter of 2026, Tesla sales plummeted in the U.S., marking its third straight year of Q1 sales declines. The last time Tesla’s Q1 and full-year sales in America grew was in 2023. Barring a few exceptions, it has been mostly downhill ever since.

The Texas-based automaker sold 117,300 units in the U.S. in the first three months of this year, representing its lowest quarterly sales since late 2021 and an 8.4% year-over-year decline, according to Cox Automotive estimates. The first quarter of last year was a low bar to begin with, with Tesla posting its worst results in two years during that period.

But the rest of America's EV industry fell harder, buoying Tesla's share of the market. In total, automakers sold 216,399 EVs in the U.S. between January and March, Cox says, 27% fewer than the same period last year. Non-Tesla EV sales fell by a whopping 41%, according to an InsideEVs analysis of Cox's data. Tesla not only held firm as the U.S. EV sales leader, but its market share jumped from 43.2% to 54.2% year over year

So I guess kind of a weird flex, but if that's all you got then that's what you flex with.

 

[plague311]

Honestly, the rest of it doesn't look good either. Outside of the Model Y, Tesla is pretty much stinking it up too. Per that same article:

The automaker’s other models, on the other hand, are suffering. The Model 3 posted one of its worst quarters in years, with 31,672 estimated sales, a nearly 40% year-over-year decline. The last time the Model 3 had such disappointing Q1 sales was in 2024, when it was undergoing the “Highland” mid-cycle refresh. It’s also a sedan in a sea of electric SUVs and crossovers that American buyers overwhelmingly prefer.

The Cybertruck's Q1 drop was even worse, albeit from a much lower baseline. The truck saw a 45% year-over-year decline and just 3,513 sales. Tesla once planned to sell more than 250,000 units annually, but the wedge-shaped stainless steel truck has turned out to be an epic flop—with a small group of dedicated fans. Sales Model S and Model X, which have now been discontinued, also fell sharply in Q1, but they have not contributed meaningfully to Tesla's sales for quite some time.

You could pretty much just say that the Model Y is doing well, Tesla as a whole is not.

 

[theprestige]

fraud is the norm, not the exception, when it comes to anything to do with Pentagon Contracts - that's why it has never passed an Audit in living memory.

It hasn't passed an audit because it's never been one single monolithic budget organized according to a central principle. Of course there's fraud and corruption - there's always fraud and corruption. But on the other hand, there's also obviously a multi-trillion dollar military establishment, too. The bases are real. The aircraft carriers are real. The soldiers are real, as are the paychecks and the meals they receive. It's not like some quartermaster deep in some supply closet just pocketed a trillion dollars with nothing to show for it.