Katie Martin

Now, you take a little look at the electric vehicle slash robot maker Tesla, which is Musk's other big thing, and you wonder what gives him so much confidence in his ability.

That stock's down by about 30% since November.

But the launch, get it, of SpaceX is happening.

It will be impossible to avoid, and it will be a big test of whether investors are up for hype and promises and whether they really want more Elon Musk in their lives.

Today on the show, will this thing fly?

This is Unhedged, the markets and finance podcast from the Financial Times.

I'm Pushkin.

I'm Katie Martin, a markets columnist here at FT Towers in lovely sunny London.

And I'm joined down the line from New York City by my usual fellow astronaut, Rob Armstrong.

Rob, say hello.

But we also have, all the way from San Francisco, a genuine FT legend, a stalwart, Richard Waters, known affectionately around these parts as Muddy.

You're a real authority on all things big tech and Silicon Valley, and it's very early over there.

So, Richard, thank you so much for coming on today.

It's all about the satellites.

So, look, tell us, let's start from basics here.

For normal people, what is SpaceX?

Where does it fit in this grand Elon Musk universe where everything has an X in it?

So like SpaceX mushed together with XAI, which is his artificial intelligence grok thing.

Tell me how that makes sense.

It's a good job it's not an electric car company just anymore because like sales of those things are falling off a cliff in Europe.