Irish low cost carrier RyanAir’s response to the tiff with Elon Musk. Even so, the Ryanair CEO has skilfully turned their recent insults and public stoush into a promotional fare sale for “idiots”. In making the announcement, O’Leary wrote: “Musk knows even less about airline ownership rules than he does about aircraft aerodynamics.” For Musk, whose rocket company SpaceX has revolutionised space cargo, those words must hurt. (Musk apparently was peeved enough about US president Joe Biden’s snub of Tesla’s electric cars that he began backing Donald Trump in 2024.) For all his public brawling, the South African-born billionaire’s technology, including at Tesla and X, has had a huge impact on the world. Advertisement Yet Musk seems increasingly unable to draw a line between genuine technological disruption and the political chaos he has aided on Earth. It is possible that this Musk-engineered political chaos will one day even reach Mars. The Starlink terms and conditions require users to agree to reject Earth-bound human governance of the red planet, reflecting Musk’s personal crusade to colonise in the planet on his terms. One wonders if the 280,000 terrestrial subscribers to Starlink in Australia truly realise what they are signing on to. One wonders if any of us do with Starlink on long-haul flights. None of this is to say that the technology behind Starlink, which receives internet signal from 9300 (and counting) small satellites in low Earth orbit, permitting faster connection and fewer outages, isn’t valid or even inspired. Advertisement