I thought he wanted to just buy a single rocket to fly a plant with a webcam to Mars to inspire people.

Musk's companies operate without a lot of the kind of beaurocratic bloat found in most other auto makers or NASA. No dozens of DEI administrators making everyone's work life miserable, pretending it's not just politics being rammed down their throat, treating grown adults like children, etc. That alone gives him a competitive advantage.

Do you honestly think DEI is the biggest source of bureaucratic bloat?

Yes, though not directly perhaps in many private companies, but it's a sure sign of a serious systemic inefficiency in management and company culture. Unless it's a major University, then it's absolutely a massive problem by itself.

> Let's not forget that the initial plan of SpaceX was to meet and get drunk with Russian leaders to buy missiles from them and resell them to US market. Imagine the nightmare if it actually had worked as planned.

The story I've heard is that he wanted to buy a single missile, but regardless.. where is the 'nightmare' in disarming Russia by buying up all their missiles in a firesale? It seems doubtful that such purchases would have effectively funded the construction of new missiles since Russia is/was so corrupt. I think the money would have gone into the hands of some oligarchs, and not been invested back into new missile development.

Even if that plan had gone through, it would have been child's play compared to the ESA and NASA as well as numerous western corporations buying rocket rides from Russia since the mid 90s up to the second Russian invasion of Ukraine a few years ago. Go down the lists of Proton launches on wikipedia and mouse over each of the payloads, you'll see that most of them since the mid 90s have been for American or European organizations. Even ULA and Orbital Sciences have bought hundreds of engines from Russia and used them to launch US payloads. I don't see many people raking them over the coals for this. Has this even proven to be a nightmare? Western money has kept Russia's space program alive, but has that funded any successful 'Wunderwaffes'? Russia's military is still running off the fumes of the Soviet Union and their supposedly amazing wonder weapons either don't exist or aren't relevant. Most of that money probably went up their noses.

> political issues

Ah those pesky "political issues" commonly known as "process", "due diligence", or "laws".