The archive link that references Shotwell is dead. What was that pointing to?
The Heritage Foundation can say whatever they want about SpaceX-- just because they can say it, that doesn't mean that SpaceX as an entity is onboard with the position Project 2025 paints for them.
There's a user on reddit with a bunch of alts that keeps spamming the conspiracy theory that SpaceX is a front by the military and intelligence agencies to funnel money into building a missile defense shield. They like to point to an AI chat with Twitter/X's Grok as proof.
It's true that some people connected to SpaceX were also interested in missile defense, but that's hardly unusual given that we're talking about the intersection between defense and the aerospace industry.
To the extent that SpaceX enables missile defense it's in the same way they enable any other space endeavor, as a natural consequence of lowering the cost of lifting payloads to orbit.
Trump has been pitching a reboot of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative using Elon's Starlink. At least publically since his reelection campaign: "the United States will build a missile defense shield to intercept nuclear weapons" https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/donald-trump-pla...
It's also in Project 2025 / Heritage Foundation docs.
SpaceX was founded in 2002 with help of a CIA agent named Mike Griffin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career ) who funneled them funding (lots of citations at end of https://archive.ph/D2zIG ). Griffin worked for In-Q-Tel and also was the Deputy of Technology for the Strategic Defense Initiative, later started the Space Development Agency (SDA) which is to become Trump's SDI in 2025.
> But the FAA really does take much more time than they should
What does that mean? Don't they take the amount of time they need in order to ensure safety, so that's the perfect amount of time? Or are you saying they're purposefully dragging their feet behind them just to make it slower for no good reason?
> Don't they take the amount of time they need in order to ensure safety
I think the perception is that they spend all their time calling the meeting to order, identifying participants, itemizing the agenda, breaking for lunch, slowly reading a checklist of procedures, reconvening after a formal proposal for investigation takes place, etc. etc., eventually followed by about 48 hours of actual review activities. The typical bureaucratic process.
If by bureaucratic you mean the same typical tropes about lazy government employees sucking off the taxpayers tit that's probably not what the person you're referring to meant.
If by bureaucratic you mean laborious and involving a lot of people thoroughly dotting i's and crossing t's then yeah, that's probably what the person you're replying to meant.
Rockets from every other organization on Earth drop whole stages into the ocean (except China, who drop them on villages instead). But EDS sufferers act like SpaceX dropping a fraction as much hardware in the ocean is a great crime against humanity.
Also very harmless (consider how many meteorites hit the Earth every year and consider how reactive the steel is compared to the random rocks) and very normal for rockets.
The Heritage Foundation can say whatever they want about SpaceX-- just because they can say it, that doesn't mean that SpaceX as an entity is onboard with the position Project 2025 paints for them.