Eric Thiel

Space settlement advocate. EV and robotics enthusiast. YouTube: Space Strategy

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

Can any Moon Landing deniers help explain how this Apollo rover scene was filmed in a studio?

[Dave Limp @davill]

Some LC-36 updates. Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” and the three GS-2s that were onsite in the integration facility also look good.

I’ve seen some speculation that we might move directly to the 9x4 configuration, but we won’t do that. Rate manufacturing of 7x2 is going well, and we’re going to continue that at pace as planned and store the stages for use. In addition, we had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector.

We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter.

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

@BecomingCritter https://t.co/bjhTZNjB1t

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

@imgoingtoduck Delta 9, or just created a new delta for it

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

Space Force needs to get involved with asteroid deflection. I think this would be the perfect name.

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

@rookisaacman @RaminNasibov Building a Moon base begins with collecting minerals

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

https://t.co/3iISqjnnto

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

China might be less than 12 months from sending Long March 10 on a lunar flyby. This will be their Artemis 1 moment. Then how soon until they take crew?

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

@KozzieKozma Succession

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

Trying to play it cool with friends while knowing the entire Moon Base and Artemis III timeline probably slipped by a year.

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

Blue Origin gets a contract for Moon Base lander then this happens

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

I want a future where I can operate construction equipment on the Moon

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

Transition NASA’s CLD to the U.S. Space Force: a military-led program where stations are privately built and operated (such as Axiom and Vast) under Space Force contracts.

Space Force astronauts will lead secured experiments in:
• Advanced materials & in-orbit manufacturing (radiation-hardened components)
• Biotechnology & human performance (muscle/bone loss countermeasures, pharmaceuticals)
• Quantum sensing & precision clocks for resilient navigation
• Logistics & propellant transfer
• Space domain awareness & defensive technologies

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

Put tanks on the Moon

[NASA Watch @NASAWatch]

US Space Force Should Prepare to Put Active-Duty Troops on the Moon, Report Argues https://t.co/jrW8urscjd

"The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies recently published a paper pushing for a military human spaceflight program that could eventually place active-duty U.S. Space Force (USSF) personnel on the Moon and on board orbital space stations for defensive operations against China’s alleged military-focused space initiatives. The report signals a dark turn for the ongoing space race, suggesting that orbital warfare looms behind ongoing efforts to establish a permanent presence on the Moon. @NASAMoonbase #NASA #Artemis #Moon #Lunar"

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

New Ferrari is wild

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

@NASA @tobyliiiiiiiiii @NASAArtemis Let’s bet on who is selected

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

The Vanguard is the same ship that appears in this Space Force video: https://t.co/Pgm4aEZtnA

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

The final starship departs after the completion of the USSF Vanguard, circa 2042.

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

About a decade ago Dennis Tito proposed a Mars flyby. Glad to see the idea for private flyby come up again.

[Milk Road AI @MilkRoadAI]

Jeff Bezos just publicly called SpaceX the gold standard of the space industry and said the world needs at least two of them (Save this).

That is a disarming thing to say when you are the person trying to build the competitor.

But it is also the most strategically honest framing available because the real argument Bezos is making is not about Blue Origin winning a race, it is about why the race needs more runners.

SpaceX's numbers at this point are almost absurd.

The company completed over half of all orbital launches worldwide in 2025 and accounted for more than 90% of all payload mass sent to orbit from Earth.

Falcon 9 has become the most flown, most reliable orbital launch vehicle in the history of spaceflight, flying over a hundred times a year at a cost no government program has ever approached.

A new second stage comes off the production line every two and a half days.

And the gap between SpaceX and the rest of the global launch industry has been widening for five consecutive years.

Bezos knows all of this better than almost anyone.

He started Blue Origin in 2000 two years before SpaceX was founded and has watched SpaceX execute a compounding learning curve that he was trying to replicate with a different philosophy and a longer time horizon.

SpaceX's approach was speed, hardware iteration, and public failure as a learning tool.

Blue Origin's approach was slower, more methodical, and more private which produced a more cautious culture and a longer runway to first results.

The delta in outcomes between those two philosophies is now visible in the launch data, and Bezos is the first to acknowledge it.

But his argument about why the world needs two SpaceXs is the more interesting one.

Space access is currently priced and designed around Falcon 9 which means every satellite operator, every government programand every commercial venture that needs to reach orbit is dependent on one company's launch manifest, one company's pricing decisions, and one company's technical risk profile.

This is the equivalent of the global internet running through a single undersea cable.

The downstream industries that will be built on cheap, reliable space access in-orbit manufacturing, energy transmission, planetary resource extraction, and eventually settlement need competition at the infrastructure layer to prevent a single point of failure from becoming a permanent structural advantage.

Blue Origin is making the argument in hardware now.

New Glenn is completing one vehicle per month off the production line and targeting double-digit orbital launches in 2026, with NASA's lunar lander contract already locked in and long-term commercial agreements with major satellite operators secured.

@JeffBezos said in the interview that the pace of progress is moving faster than he expected when he started which, from someone who has been building rockets for 24 years with full knowledge of how hard the problem is, is a meaningful data point.

The most underappreciated thing about this moment is what a genuine two-player market in heavy-lift launch would mean for the cost curve.

SpaceX drove launch costs down by roughly 90% over 15 years by forcing the industry to compete on economics rather than government contracts.

A second company with comparable capabilities, production scale, and reusability would put pressure on that cost curve in ways that SpaceX competing against legacy providers never did because both players would actually be competing for the same customers on the same terms.

That is the world Bezos says he is building toward.

The gap is still wide but the direction is right, the trajectory is accelerating, and the destination, cheap, routine, multi-company access to space is the prerequisite for everything that comes after it.

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

The unmanned space force X-37B

[Eric Thiel @Space_Strategy]

The military needs a human rated spacecraft. We came so close in the past.