This repeated pattern of illegal, safety-regressive behavior must be a fluke. Frankly, if the leadership creates cultures that harm their workers and where retaliation against workers was normal, then you would expect that to occur at other companies they run. Like, some kind of successful lawsuit where workers complained about their supervisors calling all their black coworkers the N-word and all the swastikas on the walls then were reprimanded for bringing it up [7] where the judge legally declared the companies "conduct was reprehensible and repeated"[8] and awards in excess of the standard maximum were "appropriate in light of the endemic racism at the Tesla factory and Tesla's repeated failure to rectify it"[9].
See, the rampant disregard for their workers and retaliation against workers is not at all in their corporate DNA all the way to the top. Just your regular old California Bay Area company where workers are called the N-word [10] and get retaliated against.
[1] https://payloadspace.com/spacex-back-up-to-its-neck-in-disch...
[2] https://www.sacurrent.com/news/federal-government-fines-elon...
[3] https://fortune.com/2025/11/08/boring-company-drilling-fluid...
[4] https://fortune.com/2025/11/12/elon-musk-boring-company-tunn...
[5] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26184164-tbc-state-l...
[6] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-m...
[7] https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06...
[8] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06... Page 29
[9] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_17-cv-06... Page 1
[10] I mean seriously, where do you even find people who will use the N-word in the Bay Area. Did they put all their job ads in the KKK and Neo-Nazi Bay Area Facebook groups? Is it like one of those anti-spy tests where you have people say: "Death to (insert country leader here)", but you have to use the N-word to get hired?
Not Rube-ish or rubish at all, IMO. I believe they're more interested in power or recreational drug use than problem-solving. Horses for courses.
If I sell steel, grain, boots, or launch services to the government and that gives me profits that I invest into some aspect of my business, I’m not sure that “subsidized by” is the clearest term.
If I'm being too extreme, can you describe a world where you'd consider enough problems have been solved that it's worth spending billions colonizing space?
Instead of establishing multiplanetary civilisations, they're burning our single-planetary atmosphere in their hubris and ego.
Citation needed. What are the current projects to make this happen? Starship is a work in progress, but that by itself wont be able to create a colony out of thin air.
How can we credibly talk about saving lives on other planets when we are demonstrably unable to protect life on the only habitable world we actually have? If we are failing at basic stewardship here, what evidence is there that we would act more responsibly anywhere else?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
If the top 1% would spend 1% of their wealth on preventing "low-hanging fruits" like
* children starving
* children dying from diseases whose vaccinations cost 1$
* educating people on things like STDs, etc
If there’s a government anywhere that isn’t providing this for its citizens, perhaps looking into why that government is such a failure would yield greater and more durable change than a point patch of just a few vaccines.
> If the top 1% would spend 1% of their wealth
Why should we expect/demand more generosity from only 1% of the population? Maybe everyone should spend 1% of their wealth on these efforts? It’s easy to be magnanimous with someone else’s wallet.
“More” generosity? As if any is given. And it’s not about “generosity”, it’s about contributing to the society they are taking from. Billionaires exploit everyone else to the point of causing disease and death then hoard all the money produced from that for themselves.
Also, I don't believe they'd ever be auto-sufficient, because of the aforementioned qualities of Mars: anoxic, sterile, radioactive and subzero. They'd certainly never thrive. More probably, they'd live in a kind of inescapable company-town, millions of miles away from the nearest jurisdiction, at the mercy of a guy known for brutalizing his workers, where going on strike means you probably just die. Sounds like absolute hell.
So, unfeasible, unrealistic, pointless. You can do much more good for humanity by investing here on Earth, obviously.
A mars colony is probably doable. A self-sustaining mars colony? For the length of time it would take a completely devastated Earth to recover? Absolutely impossible, at least with our current technology.
Think about the level of supply chain you'd need to get something like a computer or a solar panel made on Mars. Where do you get plastic? Iron ore? Copper? Pure fantasy.
It would still be cool to have a colony on mars.
amatecha•7h ago
SilverElfin•7h ago
This is pretty scary. Who knows what other health problems employees have are related to this issue. And SpaceX won’t comment or share what chemicals were involved? Horrible.
amatecha•7h ago
Reason077•5h ago
In any case, it seems strange that customer support staff, who are presumably not trained in haz-mat protocols etc, would be colocated with a lab using toxic chemicals.
jimnotgym•2h ago
Less than SpaceX spent a lawyers to appeal it. Less than the cost of ventilation.
I guess you can look forward to that happening again then!
Pro-tip, join a Trade Union, your country doesn't protect you