Happy Tuesday, everybody! I hope you had a nice, long, relaxing Labor Day weekend. Labor Day is a signpost for many things. If you’re wearing white: go home and change. If you enjoy Pumpkin Spice Everything: head to the store and stock up. NFL fan? Better reserve your spot to belly-up to the bar on Sunday. Political sign enthusiast? Your neighborhood is about to become a red & blue minefield.
But if you’re Elon Musk, you’re thinking of none of these things. It’s quite possible you’re decked out head-to-toe in ivory, staring bleakly at a wall in a poorly-lit room. No Pumpkin Spice Latte. Certainly no office NFL pick ‘em pool to ponder over.
That’s because your company blew up a rocket on Thursday. A rocket carrying Facebook’s $200 million satellite designed to bring enhanced internet access to Africa.
Zuckerberg v. Musk in a street fight: who you got?
Snark aside: while SpaceX does have a history of failed launches and catastrophic losses to its rockets, these events are pretty par-for-the-course when experimenting with new and revolutionary technology. You try, you fail, you adjust, and you try again. But unlike Elon Musk, Nikola Tesla didn’t have a buddy’s multi-million dollar investment along for the ride when testing the Alternating Current.
Basically? SpaceX is experiencing a wave of bad PR that won’t impact its long-term viability, but will influence an ongoing storyline and boost intrigue every time its vehicles are on the Launchpad.
So we’ve got a bit of a Zuck/Musk dustup going on, and while a Billionaire Battle is always fun to watch—see Bloomberg v. Trump—this will blow over, and these two innovators will be back to working together to better the world that we live in.
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