SPACED: How Ron DeSantis paid back Elon Musk for fiasco launch announcement
What a team!
Gov. Ron DeSantis “launched” his campaign on his new buddy, Elon Musk’s Twitter platform, perfectly named “Spaces.”
As has been well-documented, the campaign launch blew up on the pad, insufficiently injuring the two in closest proximity.
Now it appears that the launch failures can be traced back to three characteristics shared by both men: overconfidence, lack of preparation, and – well, being cheap.
The “Spaces” program used to have a staff of 100, bringing invaluable institutional knowledge. Under Musk, “Spaces” now has three people managing the sub-platform, according to the social media industry site Platformer.
But DeSantis can’t be left off the hook for even the Twitter failure because an organized campaign should have a technical advance team working with local or company officials to ensure perfection, if possible.
So that was that failure.
Now, perhaps in a quid pro quo, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that gives Space X a complete liability shield in the State of Florida if any crew members are hurt or killed during a launch.
The liability waiver is more technically described by reporting from Rolling Stone:
“DeSantis signed into law CS/SB 1318 – Spaceflight Entity Liability along with 27 other bills. The law exempts ‘spaceflight entity from liability for injury to or death of a crew resulting from spaceflight activities under certain circumstances.’ The measure also requires ‘a spaceflight entity to have a crew sign a specified warning statement.’”
NASA took possible launch failures so seriously that each shuttle had what was literally a kill switch controlled by both the launch coordinator in Houston and the captain of the shuttle.
If the vehicle malfunctioned and veered toward land, each astronaut had already agreed to sacrifice their life to smithereens rather than kill or hurt anyone on the ground. Talk about liability waivers.
The difference is that Space X ultimately plans on hauling civilians up on rockets and maybe civilians didn’t sign up to have Space X flick a kill switch (which they surely would if their rocket goes a-“Twitter” and started heading toward downtown Jacksonville.)
Now, no civilian can sue, no matter how blatant a mistake made by Space X, even if something like the antennae or radio didn’t work.
The law signed just days after the Twitter DeSantis campaign launch explosion looks just a bit too convenient, especially when it involves Musk, a man who has already claimed that he’s eschewing Trump, looking for a “somewhat normal candidate” and sure seems attached to DeSantis.
Normal politicians do not do favors for friends in quid pro quo style, and they most certainly don’t force their staffs to shakedown lobbyists in a manner that looks to the casual observer as obvious “extortion,” as the term is normally used.
Regardless, it looks like the two have a lot in common.
And, wow, DeSantis is being extremely generous with one of – if no longer “the” – world’s richest men. Wonder what sparked that interest?
Friendships usually form by accident, but they don’t stay together by accident, it takes the ability to forgive each other’s shortcomings.
Given that Musk blew up DeSantis’s campaign launch, and numbers dictate that Musk will, inevitably, blow up a launch somewhere near Florida, that sure seems like a willingness to forgive and forget.
If these weren’t two of the most horrible people on Earth and didn’t involve such horrible and explosive things, it might actually be seen as sweet.
But, no. It tastes undeniably bitter.
More from Occupy Democrats: PANDERING: DeSantis cozies up to MAGA with promise to “consider” Trump pardon
I can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and on Twitter @JasonMiciak.
