MSpaceX just told NASA it's done with Crew Dragon by 2030, and it's not selling new Falcon 9 launches after 2028.
CElon is all in on Starship and Starlink. You can't say he's not focused.
MFocused, maybe. But this is the company that's supposed to carry American astronauts, and now NASA's plan B is... Boeing's Starliner?
CThe capsule that has had more delays than takeoffs. That's reassuring.
MExactly my point! NASA has no guaranteed American ride after 2030. Ken Kremer, who tracks this for Space UpClose, called it potentially catastrophic.
CBut SpaceX isn't walking away mid-contract. They're fulfilling existing launches. They're just not selling new rockets they don't need. That's what a business does.
MBut they're also declining new Space Force bids. That's not just business—it's ceding a strategic launch edge.
CTo whom? Nobody else has a reusable rocket like Falcon 9. The private market will still buy seats. A leaner SpaceX is a faster SpaceX.
MFaster for Starlink and orbital data centers, sure. But lunar lander companies just got told SpaceX won't launch them. Artemis is already limping.
CBecause Starship will do the landing itself! You don't need a separate lander if the same rocket lands. That's the whole architecture now.
MBut that lands on the Moon only if Starship actually works at the scale they keep promising. We've seen test flights, not a crewed lunar landing.
CYou don't bet against the one company that made reuse routine. Boeing hasn't flown Starliner with crew on a regular schedule. NASA knew this day was coming.
MI'm not saying bet against them. I'm saying a single point of failure for America's human spaceflight is bad. Even Shotwell says NASA should lean on Starliner—that's admission enough.
CShotwell is being realistic about low Earth orbit. She's not saying Starliner is great, she's saying let commercial competition take the routine stuff while SpaceX builds the hard thing.
MThen why not keep selling Falcon 9 to commercial customers? You can do both. Unless the goal is to choke off competitors.
COh, come on. They stopped selling new launches after 2028 because they need the pads and crews for Starship. That's capacity, not conspiracy.
MThe result is the same: NASA and everyone else wait on a rocket that hasn't proven it can do these missions on schedule.
CAnd if Starship slips, SpaceX still flies existing Falcon contracts through 2030. That's a several-year bridge. Let's not act like it's a cliff next week.
MFine, the existing contracts matter. But after 2030, if Starship is behind, the U.S. has no domestic backup. I'll take your several-year bridge and raise you, then what?
CThen maybe Starliner finally works, or Blue Origin's New Glenn scales up. Competition doesn't appear by forcing SpaceX to sell old rockets forever.
MThat's not the worst point. But it's a hell of a bet to make on Boeing after everything.
CIt's a bet on SpaceX first. NASA has to decide if it wants to be a customer or a co-owner.
MDifferent fight, same theme: who controls the pipes. Ars Technica reports the New York Times is demanding Brave shut down its paywall blocker and end its deals with AI firms.
CBrave is a browser that blocks paywalls by default? That's a feature, not a bug. The Times calls Brave a supplier of stolen news.
MThe lawsuit is real. But the demand to cut AI deals is the bigger tell. Newsrooms are terrified that their content trains models for free.
CPeople install Brave because paywalls are obnoxious. The Times wants to have it both ways: free reach and a tollbooth.
MNo, they want to get paid for the journalism that costs real money. You can't run a newsroom on ad revenue alone anymore.
CThen sell subscriptions directly. Don't sue a browser for giving users control over what loads on their device.
MSo your solution is every paper charges nine dollars a month and half the internet disappears behind logins. Brave doesn't make news cheaper, it makes it invisible.
CNo, my solution is the Times figures out what readers actually value. If people won't pay, that's a product problem, not a browser problem.
MBut Brave isn't just blocking a paywall; they're also cutting deals with AI companies. That means the news gets scraped and resold, and the original reporter gets nothing.
CThen block the scraping, not the humans. That's a separate issue the Times is packaging to make Brave look like a pirate.
MI'll give you that. The piracy framing is dramatic. But I still don't think a browser should decide who gets to see a newspaper's work.
CThe browser doesn't decide. The user does. And that's the part the Times hates.
MOkay, we're not settling that one. Let's move to something everyone can agree on: car interiors. Ars Technica interviewed a Nissan designer, and the headline is buttons are back and storage is king.
CFinally. Touchscreens for climate control are a safety hazard wrapped in a fingerprint.
MThe designer says drivers want tactile controls and actual places to put stuff. No more piano black, apparently.
CPiano black should be banned. It scratches if you look at it and reflects sun straight into your eyes.
MThe interesting part is storage. People treat cars like mobile offices now, so designers are adding shelves, hooks, and bigger console bins.
CGood. If I can't fit a water bottle and a phone without dumping them on the passenger seat, it's not a real car.
MNissan says the shift came from watching how people actually live in their cars—not from focus groups. That's rare.
CAnd it's about time. Simpler interiors age better. Ten years from now, a button will still work; a buried touchscreen menu will feel like a rotary phone.