Hi everybody, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny—sometimes Colorado. Every now and then, something truly extraordinary happens in the world of aerospace, and today was a very special day in the world of space flight.
Let me share my screen real quickly. This was the day that Starship launched. To give you a sense of how big this vessel is, it’s the average height of a person. The New Shepard from Blue Origin, I believe that’s the rocket that William Shatner went up on into space. Then there’s the Falcon 9, which is the rocket you see landing on a pad. When my dad was a kid, he saw the Saturn V launch, which took us to the Moon. Starship is a proposed platform to take us there as well.
Starship is by far the biggest, standing at 394 feet. To give you another view, here’s the Statue of Liberty next to Starship, just to illustrate how big this rocket is. It is truly gargantuan, with more than 30 engines and methane fuel—a ton of innovation across the platform. It’s not just that they built a giant rocket and we’re going to see if we can take off with it; it’s a platform. They’re going to use it just like the Falcon 9 for the same type of operating conditions: reusability, low-cost fuel, and huge cargo capacity. There’s a very good probability that if they continue on the trajectory they’re on, Starship will be the platform that takes us to the Moon and beyond, meaning there’s a good chance this could be the platform that takes us to Mars.
Now, today’s launch was really extraordinary because of the parallel reality between what the media and those who dislike Elon Musk and SpaceX reported versus what the company itself stated. Prior to the launch, SpaceX said the definition of success was clearing the pad and gathering flight data; anything else is gravy and icing on the cake. It doesn’t have to happen, but it’s not considered a failure. Starship cleared the pad, took off, had some struggles here and there, and it’s clear there’s an enormous amount of flight data they’re going to analyze. Huge improvements will be made to the platform.
They obviously try to go as far as they can with these missions to gather as much data as possible. Starship failed on separation; rockets are built in stages, and when you burn one stage, it separates, allowing the next stage to open up, and then the top of the rocket gets into space. That separation didn’t happen, and the rocket went into a catastrophic spin and broke up. Instead of saying it was a wildly successful mission where Starship successfully launched, gathered all the data, and they’re moving forward with their plan, the first post from the Washington Post was “Starship Explodes.”
Normal people reading that headline and seeing the videos would say, “Oh, it’s a failure.” This brings up a broader point about where we are in innovation. It’s really unfair to companies and innovators who tell you upfront what their definition of success is, how they’re spending their money, and that they’re following a tried and true systematic approach. Then, after the fact, people arbitrarily change the rules and declare them a failure. But that’s where we are right now.
We don’t really have any heroes left; we don’t really have anything to aspire to. Everything is political now. This is a monumental engineering achievement. Just take a moment to think about it: a private company led by great engineers literally constructed a space vehicle themselves with their own money. It rivals the greatest scientific accomplishment of the United States in the 20th century—the Saturn V program. The Apollo Mission required one million people and took ten years to get to the point where they could launch that rocket and get to the Moon. Starship can replicate a large chunk of that as the launch vehicle, and it was done by a private company that has systematically worked its way through test after test, explosion after explosion, with great results.
It’s one of the only private companies I know of that has taken astronauts into space—correct me if I’m wrong— to the space station. It’s not hypothetical; they’ve done it. But because of a political distaste for the leadership of that company, we can’t acknowledge in the mainstream media that this is a great success and a great achievement. We should all be collectively proud that someone managed to do this. It benefits every person in the world to make humanity a multi-planetary species, to open up space, and to continue to grow and create redundancies in the event that something happens, like an asteroid striking the Earth or a virus that kills us all. It’s pretty good for humanity to take these steps forward, and this was an amazing day, marked by cynicism.
I recall when William Shatner went to space with Blue Origin, another great company doing phenomenal work. Instead of people getting excited that someone in their 90s was able to actually go into space, it was made into a joke by late-night television—a mockery. It’s not really healthy cynicism. We don’t get to feel the winds anymore, and then we wonder why we have a mental health crisis. We wonder why so many people have anxiety disorders. They feel alone, damaged, depressed, and have problems relating to people. They’re toxic and angry all the time. Why? Because society as a whole is making everybody sick.
The way we’re going about things—thinking about things, viewing things—we’re not allowing ourselves to share common humanity. Everything is in its buckets and silos, and it’s quite relevant to the cryptocurrency space. Everything always goes back; our space is not unique. We’re caught up in all of this. We have so much tribalism, factions, and fictitious thinking. We hate each other because of it. So when someone in the industry does something great, like the success of the zkEVM, and I congratulate Vitalik for that, people can’t comprehend that it’s a sincere congratulations. They think he’s being cynical or sarcastic.
When we do something great and another founder acknowledges it, occasionally they do, believe it or not, people think it’s got to be a trap or a lie. It’s inconceivable that we can wish people well and take pride in the great things they do, even if those people are competitors. This should be a great day, and I think for all the people at SpaceX, it is. On the horizon over the next few years, this platform is not only going to evolve; it’s going to become a workhorse that will carry thousands of satellites, astronauts, and complex space vehicles and components to space. Its cost of operation will be orders of magnitude lower than Saturn V. That is pure innovation, and there’s just a lot of wonderful engineering, great design ideas, and forward thinking with what they’ve accomplished today.
It’s an overwhelming success but also a great reminder of why we have the problems we have today and what we need to do moving forward. It’s become increasingly clear to me that the media is captured in the United States and abroad. It’s no longer an entity that calls truth to power; it’s no longer objective. It’s basically just a cesspool of trend-following, yellow journalism, bias, and polarization—rage porn that makes you angry every day. That’s all they’re there for; they’re not there to inform you. They demonstrate this time and again by their behavior. They also demonstrate time and again that the media hates freedom of speech and open access to information. Apparently, we, the unwashed masses, are not allowed to know unless we’re told by them what the truth is.
We recently had a presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy Jr., running on the Democrat side, and apparently, 30 minutes into his announcement speech, he was censored and shut off. People didn’t like what he had to say. We have no political diversity of thought. If you don’t follow the orthodoxy that’s been pre-decided by people you’ve never met and never will, you’re considered illegitimate. The most popular podcaster in America, whose ratings often aggregate those of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC together, is Joe Rogan. He’s never mentioned in mainstream media as the most popular podcaster in America or as an influential and powerful person. Instead, he’s labeled an “alt-right comedian” and “vaccine denier.”
This is the challenge of our time. We have to change the way we communicate and interact with each other. We need to feel the winds, have collective empathy, and understand each other. We must engage in meaningful dialogues. For the cryptocurrency industry, we have the power to enable collaboration. Blockchain technology can do this. We have the power to identify people; self-sovereign identity and DIDs can do this. We have the power to incentivize different ways to communicate; tokens can do this. But just because you have a technological capability doesn’t mean we are going to do this. We have to choose to, and we start by acknowledging there is a problem.
Today is a great example—one of so many of a problem. If it’s not easy to see, then I think what’s happened is you become a victim of the propaganda that continues to flow through. It’s not about liking people or endorsing people. There are plenty of things that Elon Musk has done throughout his career that are really strange and weird. It’s very frustrating and pisses me off. But at the end of the day, I can acknowledge that he’s done some great things. The Model Y is the best-selling car in the world, overthrowing the Toyota Corolla. Who thought that would happen? Over a million units—go figure. He kicked Ford’s ass with this spaceship, the most ambitious private space program ever conceived. Today, I saw it take off. The proof is in the pudding, and we’re not allowed to feel that as a win. We’re not allowed to acknowledge that this is making things better.
We have to hate him because he’s apparently said things people don’t like. That’s humanity now; that’s the world. Everybody has tribes and factions, and we’re all throwing grenades at each other. I don’t want to live in that world, and it’s not going to get any better. It’s only going to get worse—petty, absolutely petty. For the craziest reasons, people are going to be basically excommunicated from mainstream society. I don’t like our gatekeepers; I don’t like our institutions. I think our industry as a whole has exposed how corrupt they really are and how far they’re willing to go to hold onto power.
As you think about the future and acknowledge that there are problems, always understand that the things we do in this industry are the ultimate escape hatch. They are the ultimate opt-out. You see, it’s not about tokens; this is not about some crypto wallet here or Cardano versus Ethereum. At its core, this is about self-sovereignty and economic agency. Ultimately, it’s about getting to an objective reality where we’re all treated equally and have access to the truth—not the truth according to someone, but the objective reality of things. Whether we like it or not, whether it offends us or not, whether it’s convenient or not, or whether it perpetuates your business model or not, that’s a much healthier world to live in. It’s one that I think we all deserve, but we have to earn it.
So congratulations to SpaceX for their amazing achievement. I cannot wait to watch the next launch, and I cannot wait to see the next great accomplishment. I can’t wait to see humanity return to the Moon, and I can’t wait to see humanity set foot on Mars. It’s long overdue, and it’s about time to inspire people again. Personally, I took away from this a belief that we can be better and achieve great things if we choose to and work together. I hope this skews just a little bit of cynicism and brightens your day. Thank you so much. Cheers!
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