The Griffin connections go back to SpaceX's founding (they examined ICBMs together in Russia and even presented together at Mars Society). SpaceX was founded months after SDI's main barrier, the ABMT Treaty, was withdrawn from by the U.S. The first contracts by SpaceX were part of Prompt Global Strike (DARPA Falcon Project) which was a proposed hypersonic delivery system for boost-phase interceptors.
> first contracts by SpaceX were part of Prompt Global Strike (DARPA Falcon Project)
You’re skipping the $400mm NASA COTS contract that came a year earlier.
DARPA bought the first two launches for hypersonic delivery system research, but it was primarily aimed at prompt global strike. As in what it says on the tin. Interception was tertiary at best, to the point that it’s mostly unmentioned [1][2].
>> You’re skipping the $400mm NASA COTS contract that came a year earlier.
You have it backwards, the DARPA Falcon project was awarded in 2003 (before Falcon rocket was even named!) COTS was 2005, and in no small part due to Griffin as mentioned.
You’re right. I ignored those because at $500k they’re immaterial, particularly against the $100mm it took to develop Falcon 1, but they did precede even Falcon 1 being named.
Against that I put literally every engineer at SpaceX in 2003 giving zero shits about that grant other than as a funding and legitimacy source. Because it wasn’t a strategic guide. And it was for building a missile, not an interceptor.
I've noticed Mike Griffin's goals have been pretty consistent since he led the SDI (and conceived COTS). Follow the man's actions not what's written on the tin. SpaceX's development has wed closely to the SDI requirements. Even Starship seems optimized for mass to LEO rather than Mars.
> SpaceX's development has wed closely to the SDI requirements
Any launch vehicle would. I have no doubt Griffin may retain his SDI roots. That doesn’t mean they transferred to SpaceX, much less Starlink.
The most we can say is SpaceX’s founders and allies were influenced by SDI. And that influence peaked in the 2000s, when SpaceX was dependent on grants versus launch contracts.
> Starship seems optimized for mass to LEO rather than Mars
That’s where the money is.
Given Starship’s flexibility, concluding much about a secret purpose is untenable. (I agree it would seem to need sizing up for Mars. But if in-orbit propellant transfer really nails, LEO and Mars are practically neighbours. (9.4 km/s to LEO, another 3 to 4 to Mars. More to the Moon.)
Not even remotely true. You can broadly classify SDI proposals into two categories; ones that require scientific breakthroughs, and ones that are really big engineering projects. The problem with scientific breakthroughs is you can't reasonably predict when and how they're going to happen, so these aren't serious proposals.
The other sort, the large engineering problems, require tens of thousands of satellites (e.g. interceptors). An oldspace style rocket with a few launches a year will never move the needle on such a project, it needs a rocket like Falcon 9 or Starship. Michael Griffin's background is in this category of SDI proposal, there can be no doubt that he knew how many satellites it will take and that doing so without cheap reusable rockets would never work.
Sorry, I should have said any launch vehicle development would. Every launch vehicle developed since 2003, including Atlas, technically advances SDI’s agenda. SpaceX does it best because they’ve done launch best. But it’s ahistoric to link the cause of that effect to SDI.
> Rockets like Vulcan do not materially advance an SDI agenda
Rockets like Vulcan are similarly capable for SDI purposes as the Falcon 1 was.
I'm open to being corrected by anyone else who was involved with SpaceX in its early days. But the SDI connection to Falcon reusable, much less Starlink, is an expert exercise in retconning.
Falcon 1 doesn't move the needle on SDI either, except insofar as it was intended as a developmental stepping stone towards a reusable rocket (which it was publicly claimed to be.) Vulcan isn't, SLS isn't... Blue Origin's work is.
Now, you said that even Atlas rockets developed after 2003 are technically advancing an SDI agenda. I don't know which Atlas rocket you're talking about (Atlas V Heavy development?), but it definitely isn't true. There was never any pretext of the Atlas rocket family being a step towards reusability, and therefore it has nothing to do with any serious SDI proposal.
> Mars Colony leaders were SDI people. Take a look at the latest stuff written by Zubrin
Who is related to Starlink in what respect?
The link between Starlink and SDI is about as close as it is to anything space related the U.S. government has done. It’s equally correct to say Starlink has its roots in space planes. Like, sure, I can draw tenuous links between the two. But that’s like saying Juicero was a military project because Silicon Valley was seeded by the DoD.
> Satellites positioned closer to Earth in LEO can swiftly target and track objects on the ground, providing both low-latency communication and high-resolution sensing capabilities. They also hold the potential for offensive actions, such as deploying interceptors to shoot down rockets or ICBMs during their vulnerable boost phase.
How much is this going to cost? Considering this system can be beaten by scheduling a regular ICBM test and pretending until it's too late and the missiles split into dozens of warheads and destroy an equal number of cities.
When I first heard of hundreds of billions going unaccounted for in pentagon spending each year, that was 30 years ago and the images of f-117s bombing Serbia (and getting shot down) still fresh, that-s where I believed that money went to. I was around 12 back then, so don't me judge to harshly on my naivete.
The typical 'its all government conspiracy' nonsense.
As usual the government isn't actually as smart as people pretend.
And contrary what people like to believe. The government is not the only organization that has a brain. The idea of having many sats and having constellations has not only occurred to the government. So the idea 'constellation' therefore its invented by the government, is brain dead dumb. Its a logically idea based on the physics of the situation.
And Griffin in these stories is way more involved and fundamental then he actually was. He was doing some consulting but he and Musk frequently clashed and didn't get along. Before modern SpaceX really got of the ground he had left. And after that he was not that favorable towards SpaceX. And today Griffin is giving talks how the government should be giving SpaceX money for Starship.
It was absolutely not Griffin that pushed for the Commercial Crew, that came out of other parts of NASA. Griffin wasn't the driver of it. Neither was he much involved with Commercial Crew.
Starlink happened literally more then a decade later with no involvement from Griffin. And Starlink primary revenue is from consumers, not from the military. And it was primarily funded by private funding rounds that SpaceX did.
The reality is Musk achieved something nobody thought was actually gone happen. And once he did the government was like 'oh shit we should jump on this'. Just as they did with reusable rockets.Yes Starlink/Starshield will make money from governments in the future. But that doesn't actually validate this story.
The idea that the US government had a long term coherent plan is utterly delusional if you understand anything about the history of SpaceX and space flight in the US.
The main evidence seems to be 'Mike Griffin' was vaguely involved in various ways.
So the whole narrative is just nonsense and doesn't even remotely hold up.
The continued goal of realizing SDI is not secret, nor a conspiracy. Heritage Foundation is quite open about it since proposing the original idea to Ronald Reagan. Griffin is a very influential member. He just pulled a team of SpaceX people (from the Starshield group) to build hypersonic warheads to implement the interceptor part of an SDI "at scale": https://www.castelion.com/team
As someone else said, follow what these people DO, not the self-serving narratives they/Elon gives biographers.
Again, your argument is that the SpaceX is somehow a result of SDI and that SpaceX exist because of it. That developments at SpaceX are somehow done because of SDI or in service of it. And that is fundamentally false.
Literally 90% of all space starups are full of former SpaceX people. Of course every now startup in space is recruiting people from SpaceX. That utterly meaningless for your argument.
> As someone else said, follow what these people DO, not the self-serving narratives they/Elon gives biographers.
You mean actually verifiable facts rather then conjecture based on a narrative that you tell yourself. Yeah why would we want facts. You are observing all the typical conspiracy theory hallmarks. Congratulations.
If you actually did some more research, if any DoD program is responsible for small launch companies like SpaceX popping up, it would be 'responsive launch'. After 9/11 the realized that they didn't have enough assets above the Middle East and started to investigate small launch to address cases like that.
That is when work like that stared and small launch companies mostly hoped to get into that. Of course it never actually turned about to be a big thing. But DoD is still working on stuff around that but it never been a big market.
No it isn't. Starlink was funded completely with private funding until well into its operation when it started getting a few small government contracts.
I've very recently seen numerous posts starting to show up on both reddit and various websites as well as anonymous wikipedia editors pushing this conspiracy theory. They all repeat the same thing. They'll claim Griffin as basically a founder of SpaceX (who in reality had almost no involvement with starting SpaceX) and they'll claim Griffin basically "gave" SpaceX its first government contracts even though NASA administrators have almost no sway over where contracts go (that'd be illegal). They'll also claim other things like that Starlink is somehow developing weapons to be put in orbit to reproduce SDI.
According to Mike Griffin (referring to the first decade of the company), "[SpaceX] will have received approximately $1.2 billion in government money from the collective programs. I’m rounding, but with this recent $400-plus million award under CCiCap [Commercial Crew integrated Capability], that brings the total SpaceX funding to something around $1.2 billion, maybe a little more.
That’s—I will only say in my view—excessive, especially since in testimony last year the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, indicated that the private funding involved was not more than $200 million. $100 million of his own money that he had brought in from a prior enterprise, and then he alluded to the fact—I’m trying to recall the testimony on an ad hoc basis, but the point is that there’s less than $200 million of private capital in SpaceX and $1.2 billion of government capital."
You are just connecting unrelated evidence. Nobody denies that SpaceX got government contracts. That still doesn't validate the overall story.
SpaceX got paid to provide services, and they did so. It had little to do with SDI or any long term demand for missile defense.
Most of the money is from experimental NASA program to find a cheap way too get money for ISS.
SpaceX got almost no money from DoD for quite a bit of its history.
> That’s—I will only say in my view—excessive
Its not 'excessive'. You can't just say 'excessive' without evidence. You actually have to show that they got overpaid for the services provided. In reality, they got underpaid and lost money on those contracts.
The thing is, most of that money was performance based. Go look up how COTS and Commercial Crew actually worked. You only get money once you reached specific milestone. Having such a contract requires you to raise private money (can be stocks or lending), and then you can try to execute, if you do, you get paid. If you don't, you wont get paid.
Look what happened with Kistler Aerospace for example. They failed to raise sufficient private capital and were kicked out of the COTS program.
So for this argument to make sense, show what contracts SpaceX got, and explain how the government could have achieved the same results cheaper.
Most experts agree, and pretty much everybody calls COTS the most successful NASA program in decades. And Commercial Crew as almost as good. NASA achieved a huge amount with little money.
> less than $200 million of private capital in SpaceX and $1.2 billion
Again, you don't just get 1.2 billion. You have to raise private capital, and then execute on your development program. Some of those 1.2 billion $ took years until they arrived at SpaceX.
For example, Griffin included 400 million $ for CCiCap. Guess what, that money didn't fully arrive at SpaceX until way after 2013. Griffin only account for Musk private funding, not all the other money raised by SpaceX.
Griffin is a very opinion person that often goes against what most people believe. I would not his interpretation and evaluation as gospel. He is a politician and a bureaucrat.
His whole spiel during the last 15 years has been that government should own the intellectual property for things like capsules and such. The thing is, most of NASA simply doesn't agree with his opinions.
And most expert that look at NASA performance, seem to agree. He is very much outside of current thinking at NASA.
You're mixing things up. Elon Musk's statement was about the private funding that was initially used to _start_ SpaceX. That statement by Griffin was also made in 2013. SpaceX has had many many billions in private funding since then.
> Terrence J O'Shaughnessy also runs Starshield at SpaceX. He was in charge of U.S. homeland missile defense
Starshield is Starlink for the military. It came after Starlink. It is neither a root of Starlink nor a missile-defence project at this time. (Maybe it eventually gains that capability. But that’s not currently in play.)
Starlink came about because SpaceX built cheap, high launch frequency rockets for, at first, NASA. It doesn’t shoehorn into an SDI origin by any stretch. At the point we’re contorting to make that connection, it might as well be part of our ballistic missile programme.
> The full report
Yes, people want missile defense. That doesn’t make everything in space is missile defense.
"In early 2002 he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[7] Musk offered Griffin the title of Chief Engineer at the company,[8] but Griffin instead became president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests.[9]"
In 2005, he was appointed NASA Administrator where he pushed for commercial cargo and crew transportation services that saved the company from bankruptcy.
"In February 2018, Griffin was appointed as Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering by Donald Trump. One of his first actions was to create the Space Development Agency.[13][14] The organization was tasked with procuring a proliferated constellation of low Earth orbit satellites to detect Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons. Commercial contracts for the constellation were given to L3Harris and SpaceX."
Man I've been saying this for years that it felt like SpaceX was just a way for the government to side-step the rot of entrenched companies like Boeing and Lockmart.
