PDF Summary:Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson

Elon Musk is one of the modern age’s most controversial figures. He’s made commercial spaceflight a viable business and brought electric cars into public awareness, but the way that Musk presents himself has led many to see him as disruptive toward society. His drive and lack of empathy have stirred up chaos in the companies he owns, and his need for absolute control of his businesses silenced criticism that he may have found useful.

Renowned biographer Walter Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years, gaining access to his thoughts and those of the people closest to him. In this guide, we’ll follow Isaacson on Musk’s journey from a traumatic South African childhood to his founding of SpaceX and Tesla, as well as his takeover of Twitter. We’ll compare the views of Musk’s supporters and detractors while giving context to his innovations and decisions that have shaped the path of technological progress.

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After that, the history of the Falcon 1 was a string of lessons learned from mistakes. The first three Falcon 1 flights exploded shortly after liftoff, but each failure gave SpaceX more information about what worked and what didn’t in their design. The fourth SpaceX flight was successful, proving that a private company could send payloads into space at a fraction of the cost and manpower employed by enormous government contractors. In 2008, SpaceX won a $1.6 billion contract to ferry cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS).

(Shortform note: Learning from failure is an essential strategy taught by management and self-help experts alike. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown insists that positive ways to turn failure into an advantage should be included as part of an organization’s onboarding process. Likewise, in The Art of Learning, chess master Josh Waitzkin suggests that you should actively seek out opportunities to fail because the faster you make mistakes, the faster your knowledge will grow. While those mistakes come at a low cost when learning to master a skill like playing chess, it takes courage to risk mistakes when launching spacecraft that cost millions of dollars.)

Fulfilling SpaceX’s new contract required a much bigger rocket. The result was the Falcon 9 and its recoverable capsule, the Dragon. The Falcon 9’s inaugural flight set the record for the largest rocket ever safely landed—those designed by rival aerospace companies were made to burn up in the atmosphere after use. Making the Falcon 9 successful required last-minute fixes and patches that would have caused NASA weeks of delays. Isaacson says that Musk’s tolerance for risk enabled SpaceX to solve problems quickly in ways that cumbersome organizations couldn’t. The Falcon 9’s success culminated in its 2020 flight of two astronauts to the ISS, the first manned American launch since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

(Shortform note: Reusable rockets weren’t invented by SpaceX. The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) used to launch the Space Shuttle into orbit were designed to gently splash down at sea, where they could be recovered and reused in future missions. Likewise, a rocket that could land vertically under its own power formed the basis of the Apollo Lunar Module. However, no components of the Apollo mission were reusable. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Blue Origin’s New Shepard were the first reusable launch vehicles that could both take off and land successfully.)

Starlink

Funding an aerospace company isn’t easy. To do so, Musk launched Starlink, a satellite-based internet service provider. Though he never meant for Starlink to be used for military purposes, in 2022 Musk donated thousands of Starlink terminals to help restore Ukraine’s communication network during the Russian invasion. This he did for humanitarian reasons, and Starlink proved vital to holding back Russia’s advance, but Isaacson writes that Musk deactivated part of Ukraine’s Starlink access when they planned to use it in a counterattack. Musk feared that an escalation in the war might trigger a Russian nuclear response and decided that Starlink should only be used for purely defensive operations.

(Shortform note: Days before the publication of this book, Isaacson posted a retraction and clarification about his reportage on Musk disabling Starlink. According to Musk, Starlink had long been disabled in the region where Ukraine planned their offensive. Instead of deactivating Starlink at the time of the attack, a move that would have actively supported the Russian position, Musk simply denied Ukraine’s request to extend Starlink coverage into the contested region. Isaacson accepted Musk’s correction of his timeline and acknowledged that Musk’s policy of restricting Starlink’s use to defense had been established before the planned attack.)

Tesla

Musk’s other dream besides leaving the Earth was saving the Earth by ending society’s fossil fuel addiction. Musk believed an energy-efficient future was just as vital to humanity’s survival as space exploration, and he chose to make an impact by bringing electric cars into the mainstream. Isaacson details how Musk entered the automotive industry with Tesla, based all of its production inside the US, and pushed its technology in the direction of fully automated, self-driving cars.

In 2003, Musk began meeting with entrepreneurs in the electric car industry. Tesla was the brainchild of Martin Eberhard, who’d licensed an electric motor for a high-end sports car that he didn’t have the funding to build. Musk provided the money and took charge of many of the car’s technical details. Tesla came together with Musk as the board chair and Eberhard as CEO, but clashes began because Eberhard and Musk each thought of himself as Tesla’s founder. Isaacson writes that Musk was incensed when the press painted him as a “mere investor,” so he took it upon himself to proselytize the company’s mission—disrupting the gas-guzzling automobile market with affordable, high-quality electric vehicles.

(Shortform note: Decades after the clashes between Eberhard and Musk that Isaacson describes, Musk continues to face allegations that he unfairly stole Tesla from Eberhard. Eberhard still owns a portion of the company, but in interviews, he declines to reveal the size of his share in the business. When asked what he would have done differently from Musk, Eberhard says that he would have pushed back against Tesla’s investment in solar power and that he would have worked to promote a friendlier working environment for employees.)

Musk took a more active role in managing Tesla’s production process, and he found that the company’s supply chain was a disaster. Its parts were manufactured all over the world, and then shipped from country to country as the car’s components were assembled piecemeal. When Musk calculated how much each car cost, factoring in worldwide shipping and assembly, he realized that Tesla would quickly go bankrupt. He quickly moved to have Eberhard fired and eventually took over as CEO himself. Isaacson says that Musk’s primary focus was to centralize production so he could control the process from start to finish, going so far as to sleep on the factory floor as he stayed day and night to solve production problems.

(Shortform note: While centralizing production under one roof can bring down supply chain costs and increase efficiency, as Isaacson suggests, it also comes with several hazards. Such integration requires high up-front costs, such as building new facilities or buying controlling shares in suppliers. The added weight of taking on all production can also hamper a company’s ability to pivot if the nature of its industry rapidly changes.)

To bring about the future he imagined, Musk didn’t only want an electric car, but one that could drive itself. In tune with Musk’s habit of setting aggressive deadlines, Isaacson writes that for over a decade, Musk has publicly declared that self-driving cars are a year or two away, and advances in machine learning are close to fulfilling Musk’s ambitions. Instead of driving based on preprogrammed “rules of the road,” new systems learn by observing the best human drivers and how they react in all situations. As a result, in 2023, Musk rode a self-driving Tesla on a 30-minute trip around Palo Alto without ever touching the steering wheel or brakes.

(Shortform note: The Autopilot test that Isaacson describes didn’t take place until 2023, but Tesla had already promoted a video in 2016 suggesting that full self-driving capability was already available on all Tesla models. In 2023, a Tesla engineer testified in court that the video had been staged using a preprogrammed route rather than making use of a Tesla’s actual capabilities. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak expressed outrage at Tesla’s misrepresentation of its self-driving features, criticizing the low quality of his personal Tesla’s autopilot system.)

Musk’s Family Life

The energy, passion, and frustration Musk expresses in the boardroom and on the factory floor are matched by the tumult he also brings into his private relationships. Isaacson says that just as in business, Musk seeks out intensity and chaos in his personal life. Musk has had turbulent relationships with the author Justine Musk (née Wilson), the actress Talulah Riley, and the musician Grimes, and has fathered 11 children whom he dotes on save for one from whom he’s publicly estranged.

Justine and Musk were acquainted in college, but they reconnected and married around the time of the sale of Musk’s first business. According to Isaacson, Justine was attracted to Musk because he was passionate about solving problems more than making money. She enjoyed fighting as much as Musk did, but after the sudden death of their infant son, Musk shut down all displays of emotion and berated Justine when she expressed hers. The couple had five more children through in vitro fertilization, but over time Justine felt that Musk used their fights as a substitute for personal connection, and she filed for divorce in 2008.

(Shortform note: Isaacson barely mentions Justine Musk’s career. Justine is the author of several novels, including the BloodAngel fantasy series and the young adult thriller Uninvited. Writing about their divorce in 2010, Justine said that Musk’s attitude toward marriage had been influenced by his upbringing in male-dominated South African culture. She described herself as a “trophy wife” who’d sacrificed much of her self-image to live up to Musk’s expectations.)

Shortly after his first marriage ended, Musk met the actress Talulah Riley, and within two weeks they were engaged—though they wouldn’t marry for two years. Isaacson says that Musk was self-aware enough to let Riley know that life with him would be hard. Nevertheless, while their marriage lasted, it was one of the few stable things in Musk’s life. Despite Musk’s often unfeeling exterior, Riley says that inside, Musk feels things quite strongly and retains a boyish excitement for the things that bring him joy. Their first marriage lasted until 2012, but they quickly remarried and stayed together until 2015, when they split for good.

(Shortform note: Though Isaacson suggests that Riley put her acting career on hold during the time she was married to Musk, she played many supporting roles in those years, including appearances in Thor: The Dark World and the television series Doctor Who. During this time, she also directed and starred in the movie Scottish Mussel, which was nominated for the Audience Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Since her split with Musk, Riley has landed recurring roles in the TV series Westworld and Pistol.)

During 2018, which was a rough year for all of Musk’s business ventures, he met the musician Claire Boucher, known as Grimes. The two shared many common interests, and like Musk, Grimes was attracted to chaotic relationships. However, Isaacson writes that Grimes possesses a streak of kindness that had long been missing from Musk’s life. Though the two ended their romantic relationship in 2021, they remain involved with each other as friends and co-parents of their children.

(Shortform note: Though Isaacson doesn’t cover her career in detail, Grimes is perhaps the most professionally accomplished among those with whom Musk has been romantically involved. Her 2012 album Visions received acclaim from The New York Times and NME, while also winning the Juno Award for Best Electronic Album of the Year. Grimes is known for speaking openly about her struggles with mental health and social anxiety. In 2022, she announced on Twitter that like Musk, she’s on the autism spectrum and has difficulty reading other people’s emotions.)

Musk’s Children

In total, as of this book’s publication, Musk has fathered 11 children—six with his first wife, Justine Musk, three with his partner Grimes, and two with business executive Shivon Zilis for whom he served as a genetic donor. His first child, Nevada, died in 2002 from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. His first child with Grimes—a boy named X—was born in 2020 and was almost inseparable from Musk during the time that Isaacson spent with him. According to Isaacson, Musk is very vocal about the need to keep population numbers up to preserve human consciousness in the face of growing artificial intelligence, and that he’s just doing his part to maintain the species.

(Shortform note: Isaacson doesn’t present the counterpoint to Musk’s fears—namely, that population growth is unsustainable. In Thank You for Being Late, Thomas Friedman explains that population growth is a driver of climate change and poverty, as more and more people consume even more resources while the global economy can’t provide enough jobs to keep up with demand. In Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger offers the optimistic prospect that advances in energy technology, such as those that Musk is working on, will allow populations to urbanize, stabilize, and hopefully recede to a healthy, sustainable level. Whether Musk would see that as a good thing is questionable, given how Isaacson frames Musk’s population fears.)

The only child with whom Musk’s relationship is strained is his transgender daughter Jenna, who Isaacson reports has disavowed her connection with Musk due to her perception of his anti-transgender views and because of her anti-capitalist political beliefs.

(Shortform note: Jenna legally changed her name and gender in June 2022, when she also took her mother’s maiden name Wilson to further disassociate herself from her father. Jenna’s mother, Justine, came out in support of her daughter’s transition on Twitter shortly after. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans support transgender rights, especially those in younger demographics. Likewise, polls show that Millennials and Jenna’s cohort, Gen Z, hold increasingly negative views of capitalism, more so than those of Musk's generation and before.)

The Twitter Saga

As Jenna became vocal about her left-leaning political views, the 2020s marked an apparent shift in Musk’s politics toward a strongly conservative stance. An avid user of the Twitter platform, Musk began to feel that its policies for banning users and promoting certain messages were skewed by a heavy liberal bias. To resolve this, Musk decided to get involved himself, first by influencing Twitter by investing, and then later by buying it outright. Isaacson describes Musk’s early interactions with Twitter’s board of directors, his rapid decision to purchase the entire platform, and his last-minute cold feet about closing the deal.

Isaacson theorizes that part of the reason behind Musk’s interest in Twitter was the unrivaled success that Tesla and SpaceX were experiencing in 2022. The calm and ease that came with success didn’t sit well with Musk’s disposition, but instead of igniting new projects at those companies, he dove into Twitter instead, encouraged by a circle of libertarian friends who, like Musk, wished to see Twitter’s content policies relaxed. Based on the size of his investment in the company, Musk approached Twitter about membership on the board but quickly realized that sharing power that way wouldn’t allow him to make sweeping changes.

(Shortform note: The idea that Twitter even had content moderation for Musk to worry about may come as a surprise to some users. The platform became notorious for its role in spreading misinformation during the 2016 US presidential election. The same period saw a rise in tweets employing hate speech targeted at a plethora of groups. A review by Amnesty International charged that Twitter was failing in its civic duty to curtail abusive and violent content targeting women. In 2017, Twitter enacted new policies to block hate speech and ban abusers who hid behind multiple accounts. By Isaacson’s timeline, this may have been the pendulum swing that Musk believed went too far in the other direction.)

Isaacson writes that rather than joining the board, Musk offered to purchase Twitter for $44 billion. Musk believed he could make Twitter profitable by offering validated user accounts for a monthly fee, as well as turning Twitter into a financial platform on which artists and creators could get paid for work they posted. Musk also wanted to democratize Twitter by removing all censorship and making its algorithm for content promotion open source and available to the general public. Beyond that, Twitter was something Musk loved as an arena for dramatic, unfiltered expression.

(Shortform note: Twitter’s creator Jack Dorsey originally envisioned the platform as a tool to send brief texts to groups of people. Usage exploded from 20,000 tweets per day in 2006 to 500 million per day in 2017. Some features, such as hashtags and the @ symbol, grew out of the linguistic shorthand that developed as people tried to squeeze their thoughts into 140 characters per tweet. Politics entered the Twitter fray with Barack Obama’s US presidential campaign and the rise of the Tea Party in 2008. Twitter also became a journalistic tool as users tweeted breaking news about the 2010-11 Arab Spring uprisings and the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri. As an outlet for the power and drama of speech, Twitter’s appeal to Musk can’t be doubted.)

However, after Musk had time to think about the deal, he started to feel that he was overpaying. Isaacson says that one crucial point was the number of fake Twitter accounts, which Musk believed the company severely undercounted. Musk had analysts comb through Twitter’s data to find out how many of the accounts were real, and when they couldn’t make a determination, Musk tried to back out or at least drop the price. Twitter sued to make Musk follow through on his agreement, but Musk got in the last twist of the knife by closing the deal a day sooner than expected and firing Twitter’s executives before they could use their stock options. Musk believed they’d misrepresented Twitter’s value, and therefore his actions were justified.

(Shortform note: Musk may not have had the last laugh on the issue of his Twitter takeover. The law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, who were employed by Twitter’s board to force Musk to complete his Twitter purchase, charged the company a $90 million success fee. Twitter’s board approved the transfer of funds 10 minutes before Musk finalized his purchase. In July 2023, Musk sued the firm to recoup that fee, but as of this writing, the case has yet to be heard in court. Meanwhile, Twitter (now X Corp) faces a multitude of lawsuits from former employees charging that the company owes them severance pay.)

The Challenges of Twitter

By taking over Twitter, Musk triggered a seismic shift in the social media landscape. The culture at Twitter and Musk’s leadership style were diametrically opposed in almost every way, resulting in a clash of ideals that upended the character of the social media platform. Musk disrupted the Twitter status quo by laying off the majority of its staff, reframing its content and account-holder policies, and reinstating many banned accounts that had been blocked for violating Twitter’s previous rules.

Isaacson explains that prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s culture emphasized inclusivity, caring for employees, and psychological safety in the workplace—all of which went against Musk’s crisis-based, aggressive management style. The first thing Musk did was to have teams from SpaceX and Tesla evaluate Twitter’s software engineering department with an eye toward reducing the company’s size. Layoffs targeted inefficient coders, staff who were potentially disloyal to Musk, and anyone who wasn’t willing to maintain the frantic pace of work that Musk preferred. The latter round of layoffs was self-driven—Musk explained his workplace expectations and gave Twitter’s remaining staff the option to “opt in” or take severance.

Different Takes on Workplace Culture

Management literature is divided on how much psychological care and concern a business should devote to its workforce. In No Rules Rules, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings backs up Musk’s position that employees should be treated as team members, not family, and that workers who are merely “good enough” should be fired to make room for even stronger replacements. In Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, he describes how the former Apple CEO managed from a similar mindset—he only wanted to employ top-tier talent who could keep up with his demanding nature while offering pushback on himself and their colleagues.

The other side of the debate argues that security and empathy are needed for workers to safely give feedback and collaborate. In The Unicorn Project, Gene Kim describes workplaces such as the ones Musk creates as toxic and detrimental to productivity, while establishing psychological safety—the freedom to admit mistakes and fix them without blame or humiliation—as an essential cornerstone for collaboration and creativity. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown agrees, stating that building trust and connection with your workers prevents defensive responses to criticism and encourages workers to grow and do better. Musk’s path is quicker—fire those who don’t perform and replace them as needed.

Musk’s next move was to halt what he saw as Twitter’s censorship of free speech, but Isaacson says that Musk quickly learned that “free speech” isn’t a simple issue. As soon as Musk took over the platform, it was swarmed by online bots posting offensive content, testing the limits of what Musk would allow. Musk had his staff shut down the attack while he leaned into creating paid, verified accounts as a means to filter out bad-faith actors, but that strategy also proved problematic—users could pay for a verified account, then change their account after the fact to impersonate another person or business.

(Shortform note: Musk himself became the target of many of these impersonation attempts. Isaacson mentions one impersonation that was merely a parody stunt, but many other fake Twitter accounts used Musk’s name to trick unsuspecting victims into fraudulent cryptocurrency deals. One Florida school principal was almost bilked out of $100,000 in school funds by one of these Musk impersonators. A second round of impersonators flooded Twitter in April 2023 when Musk introduced Twitter Blue (now X Premium), replacing the previous identity verification system. Some impersonators are merely pranksters, while others are actively malicious.)

Addressing Twitter Censorship

Musk still believed that Twitter’s old content policies had gone too far in response to such misuse of the site. To prove it, he invited journalists to pore through Twitter’s moderation policies and records. They discovered that not only did Twitter have a left-leaning bias, it had worked with the FBI to decide what information should be blocked or hidden. In some cases, Isaacson reports that this had gone beyond barring hate speech and misinformation to the outright silencing of voices that didn’t agree with mainstream thought.

(Shortform note: Twitter’s cooperation with the FBI is hardly an isolated incident, though the concern that many people voice is that of unwarranted government access to their personal information rather than censorship. A report made public in 2023 confirms that government agencies frequently buy users’ personal data from the same third-party dealers that collect information for marketing purposes. Nor is Twitter alone in being asked to block content. Google receives so many government requests to remove content from its apps that it publicly reports how many it receives and its policies for dealing with them case-by-case.)

Isaacson writes that in November 2022, Musk began reinstating accounts—both conservative and progressive—that had been banned by Twitter’s previous management, including that of former president Donald Trump, of whom Musk wasn’t a personal fan. An unintended consequence was that advertisers started leaving the platform, cutting into Twitter’s bottom line. Musk didn’t help matters by making impulsive tweets of his own, some of which amplified conspiracy theories or targeted former Twitter employees. The damage done to Twitter’s brand started to spread to Musk’s other companies and his reputation. Musk realized that dealing with Twitter was negatively impacting his mental state, and buyer’s remorse began to set in.

(Shortform note: Branding experts argue that Musk’s most damaging act is his decision to change the name “Twitter” to X. The move can’t be completely surprising, as Isaacson repeatedly calls attention to Musk’s fondness for the letter X—as in X.com, SpaceX, and his son named X. However, Twitter’s branding and associated words such as “tweet” have entered the common vocabulary. Sometimes brands change their names to distance themselves from negative associations; however, if customers’ emotional attachment to a brand isn’t taken into account before the change, the business can suffer as a result.)

In Isaacson’s first-hand analysis of the Twitter takeover and its fallout, he suggests that Musk’s fundamental mistake was treating Twitter as a technology platform, rather than a network for leveraging emotion. Musk tried to rebuild Twitter the way he’d design a rocket or a car—by cutting pieces off, seeing if it explodes, putting it back together, and trying again. This strategy worked well in Musk’s previous endeavors, but not so much in the realm of social media. And yet, though many outside observers have repeatedly predicted Twitter’s collapse, as of the time of this book’s publication, that still hadn’t come to pass.

(Shortform note: While Isaacson may be correct that Twitter’s collapse isn’t imminent, the Pew Research Center tracked several trends during Musk’s retooling of the company, such as the fact that 60% of US users planned to take a hiatus from the platform and questioned if they’d ever return. Those who remained Twitter users under Musk tended to use it less frequently than before, and partisan divides between users have grown wider. Quarterly revenue continued to drop through the first half of 2023, but despite the loss of advertisers, total revenue remained higher than it was before 2020.)

Musk and the Future

Despite the distractions and disruptions at Twitter, Musk’s other companies have still been working hard to constantly push technology forward. Isaacson insists that Musk still views bringing about a positive future for humanity as his primary mission in life. To achieve this, his teams have been developing computer chips to enhance human brains, AI-driven robots to perform manual labor, and a spacecraft capable of taking astronauts to Mars.

In 2012, Musk began to ponder the threats represented by unchecked artificial intelligence. To keep AI aligned with human values and progress, and so it can enhance us rather than replace us, Musk created Neuralink, a company to research and design computer chips to directly connect the human mind to computers. Isaacson explains that the immediate benefits would be to help people with neurological disorders regain control of their bodies. However, Neuralink’s end goal is still to create a seamless mind-machine interface so that AI can add to human consciousness. As of 2023, thanks to its progress—such as enabling a macaque to play video games with its mind—Neuralink’s technology has been approved for human trials.

(Shortform note: As impressive as Neuralink’s accomplishments are, they aren’t the only bioscience company working toward a brain-computer interface (BCI). In 2021, Synchron Inc. received FDA approval to perform human trials ahead of Neuralink reaching that goal. In 2022, Blackrock Neurotech reported that it had reached 30,000 days of having its devices implanted in patients to research their effectiveness. In 2023, Precision Neuroscience began using BCIs to map the human brain itself. Though Musk is an active participant in this race, as Isaacson makes clear, many other businesses and researchers are working to push the technology further.)

Another AI-based project Musk’s taken on is the Optimus project to build human-friendly robots capable of performing any physical task. Isaacson says that Musk sees such robots as a benefit to society—they could remove the drudgery of human labor, allowing people to spend their time pursuing educational and creative projects. By giving AI a physical presence, rather than disembodied language programs such as ChatGPT, Musk believes humanoid robots are a necessary step in the next level of AI development, one that will align AI’s interests with those of the physical world.

(Shortform note: As with Neuralink and brain-computer interfaces, Tesla’s Optimus is far from the only humanoid robot currently in development. Another is Hanson Robotics’ Sophia, which incorporates advances in language learning and emotional perception as well as articulated motion. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, while deviating from a strictly human form, displays a wide range of athletic abilities and agile motion in real-world environments. Though the early Optimus models that Isaacson describes weren’t as jaw-dropping as some of Musk’s competitors, demonstrations in 2023 show great improvement in Optimus’s design, especially in terms of hand articulation and environmental perception.)

Lastly, Musk has never wanted to be stuck in only one world. Colonizing Mars has always been his highest goal, and the next step in achieving that ambition is SpaceX’s Starship rocket, a reusable spacecraft larger than the Saturn V that launched Apollo to the moon. The first Starship test flight took place in April 2023. The rocket cleared the launchpad and almost made it into space before an engine problem aborted the mission. Isaacson makes it clear that Musk and his staff didn’t see this as a failure but as a learning success. Data taken from this initial flight will be used to improve future Starship rockets, perhaps one day sending astronauts back to the moon and beyond.

(Shortform note: Isaacson illustrates that when it comes to testing new projects, Musk prefers to try and try again as quickly as his teams can prepare them. In the case of Starship, Musk’s major hurdles are regulatory instead of technical. After the first Starship test exploded, SpaceX faced a milieu of routine evaluations by a variety of government agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration wrapped up its findings in September 2023, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service had not yet completed its review of the Starship launch’s environmental impact. Musk, of course, voiced impatience on Twitter, since the Starship itself was ready to fly.)