[chroma]

Your claims are simply incorrect.

First, Musk has been talking about Mars since before he founded SpaceX. Other people such as Adeo Ressi, Robert Zubrin, and Reid Hoffman have reported Musk talking about colonizing Mars as early as 2001. It was only after that that he went to Russia to try and buy old rockets, thinking that landing a greenhouse on Mars would excite people about space again.

Second, Falcon 1 was named 18 months before the DARPA FALCON project existed. And the contract that SpaceX was awarded was less than half a million dollars. Nine other companies got similar contracts, including AirLaunch and Orbital Sciences Corp. Only Andrews Space, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman got phase two contracts.

Third, the Starshield program is almost entirely a product of the Biden administration, and its capabilities are nothing like SDI. Current Starshield satellites are similar to that of Starlink, but owned and operated by the US government. They have better encryption and probably some observational capabilities, but they are incapable of intercepting ICBMs. An SDI program would require technologies very different from what SpaceX has been developing. For example: SpaceX uses liquid fuels, while interceptors would have to be solid boosters.

And finally, SDI is unworkable for several reasons. It takes time to launch a satellite constellation, and during that time an adversary would be incentivized to launch their nukes (since it becomes a use it or lose it situation). Or they would build more anti-satellite weapons and ground based lasers, allowing them to take out enough interceptors to launch a devastating nuclear exchange. And even if the system remained intact, it would do nothing to stop hypersonics, bombers, submarine launched ballistic missiles, and nukes being smuggled into the country. People realized this long ago, which is why (in addition to cost) SDI was cancelled.

The only way your model of the world could be correct is if Musk was a brilliant con man who has spent the past quarter century risking his fortune to develop reusable rockets for the sole purpose of building a system that everyone knows would not protect the US in a global thermonuclear war. And he's somehow kept this secret from the public this entire time, even though he's leaked many other embarrassing secrets. Musk is far from the sanest person around, but such a claim stretches credulity to the breaking point.

[mullingitover]

You might think SDI is unworkable but Mike Griffin doesn’t[1], and he’s been working with Musk for decades now. Meanwhile Starshield started launching in 2020 under the Trump administration.

You were right about Falcon though, it wasn’t DARPA but the actual SDI Falcon laser program [2].

I don’t claim to know everything and I could be wrong, but it is very unlikely that we’d know all the details the super secret weapons system if SpaceX is actually building it. The parts they wouldn’t be able to hide, however, are definitely visible.

[1] https://spacenews.com/space-development-agency-a-huge-win-fo...

[2] https://www.osti.gov/biblio/12982617

[panick21_]

Mike Griffin is one of the most involved people in US space for many decades. Of course he has some connection to many companies including SpaceX. And of course he wanted to encourage and create a more dynamic space company environment in the US.

But to see all this as some sort of linear story is just a conspiracy.

Yes people in the 80s who were part of Starwars continued to exist and continue in many place in the US government. And they still believe in many of the ideas in the 80s, specially Missile defense.

Many of them are space nerds, and simply want to see more space development in general. And they are not secretive about that, there are plenty of interviews you can look up. The whole OpenStack project came about because somebody from Starwars wanted to bring in young people to NASA. The whole company Plant came out of that too.

Specifically in regards to the early 2000s, the reason for DoD support for launch was that after 2001 they realised that they didn't have enough sat capacity over the middle east, and then they realised it would take far to long to launch new sats. Since then DoD has supported various programs for small and rapid launch. DoD has continued this, most recently with the company Firefly. That was the reason for early support for SpaceX and others, not any great dreams of Starwars ideas.

SpaceX however wasn't really able to get in with DoD much, the whole Starwars grand scale idea had no real power at DoD. NASA and the needs to supply station that made SpaceX able to continue to exist and develop. That built Falcon 9.

SpaceX themselves then pushed for Falcon 9 reusability and cheaper price. That then in turn made many old-heads at DoD dust off old plans that were shelved in the 80s and started to look into what could be done with the new capabilities that SpaceX dropped into their labs.

Remember, SpaceX wasn't the only company talking about reusability. Rocketplane Kistler had far more support from 'the establishment'. So Musk was just one of many people who want to do things in space, and most people thought he was likely gone fail.

Starlink was a natural thing for SpaceX to do. LEO internet, was a thing people had been wanting to do since the 90s. And SpaceX jumped on it with private funding. They for sure knew they would likely be able to sell to the government, but they also knew that it wouldn't be easy or fast, so they designed it as a consumer system primarily.

Now that SpaceX the largest producers of rockets and sats, of course DoD would look to them for various other projects. And SpaceX wants to make money, so if DoD asks for bids on some projects, then SpaceX will likely bid if they think they can make money.

Mike Griffin has worked with Musk, but they have also fought each other quite a bit. Even in the early days. Just recently Mike Griffin was the spearhead in the anti-SpaceX lunar lander campaign.

Basically, there is no real story here. Literally everything in modern US spaceflight was influenced by the money that flowed into the space industry in the 80s under Reagan. Many of the same people and same ideas are still around and as the space industry develops, many old ideas are warmed up, and new ideas are developed.