It’s a Big Ocean

Elon Musk tonight on overregulation:

"I got a bunch of nutty stories. SpaceX had to do this study to see if Starship would hit a shark. And I'm like... it's a big ocean. There are a lot of sharks! It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. So we said, 'Fine, we’ll do the… pic.twitter.com/Ytbqg374vI

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 20, 2024

… analysis. Can you give us the shark data?' They were like, 'No, we can’t give you the shark data.'

Well, then, okay, we’re in a bit of a quandary. How do we solve this shark probability issue? They said, 'Well, we could give it to our western division, but we don’t trust them.' I’m like, 'Am I in a comedy sketch here?!'

Eventually, we got the data and could run the analysis to say, 'Yeah, the sharks are going to be fine.' But they wouldn’t let us proceed with the launch until we did this crazy shark analysis.

Then we thought, 'Okay, now we’re done.' But then they said, 'What about whales?'

When you look at a picture of the Pacific, what percent of the surface area do you see as whale? If Starship did hit a whale, honestly, it’s like the whale had it coming, cause the odds are... so low. It’s like Final Destination: Whale Edition.

And then they said, 'What if the rocket goes underwater, then explodes, and the whales have hearing damage?' This is real!