re: What the hell does Elon Musk think he’s doing by launching reusable rockets?

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What's wrong with a little competition?

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Personally I’d love nothing more than for the Chinese to land on the Moon. The Space Race is a glorified dick measuring competition. If Earth were the size of a basketball then the Moon would proportionately be 30 feet across the room and about the size of a softball. Do you know how far a person has gone from that basketball since 1972? 3/8 of an inch. So right now we got the 30 foot long dick vs the micropenis. While I’m not optimistic about this administration (at least they kept the Space Force and said it was a good idea), the Chinese landing on the Moon would get actual patriotic Americans dicks hard to go further than we have before than that. It could unify us again against a clear enemy with clear goals: Moon Base and getting to Mars.

Unfortunately Russia and China vow to build the first Moon Base together, and if they succeed, that would be devastating for the overall course of humanity. It would turn the stars from a conquest of true freedom and liberty from extinction to spreading authoritarianism throughout the stars. It is ridiculously cheaper and more efficient to produce fuel on the Moon and launch from there than from the Earth. It takes a ridiculous amount of fuel to escape Earth’s gravity and atmosphere, but nothing to launch from the Moon and have a shite ton of remaining fuel to do whatever we damn well please through the cosmos. Even if we beat Russia and China in creating a space elevator, that wouldn’t be enough if those two countries successfully build a moon base in the near future, divide the Moon up among themselves, and get nuclear weapons there to protect their assets.