People seriously underestimate how many critical capabilities Elon Musk has brought back to America and how many entirely new ones he created from scratch When the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, America lost the ability to launch its own astronauts For nearly 9 years, NASA depended on Russia's Soyuz Then SpaceX put American astronauts back into orbit from American soil in 2020 Dragon also restored America's ability to return significant amounts of cargo and scientific research from the ISS But what SpaceX has done for U.S. national security is even more overlooked SpaceX has become part of the actual infrastructure protecting America It launches some of the country's most sensitive military and intelligence payloads It supports missile-warning and missile-tracking constellations It's building space-based systems capable of detecting and tracking airborne threats globally It's building an optical space data network designed to connect U.S. military sensors and forces securely across the planet Starshield gives the U.S. government dedicated capabilities for secure communications, Earth observation and hosted national-security payloads SpaceX is also launching NRO reconnaissance satellites, military communications spacecraft and other high-assurance national-security missions And underlying all of this is another capability America simply didn't have before SpaceX: Reusable orbital rockets that can launch, land and fly again at enormous scale Again and again, America had lost a capability, become dependent on another country, fallen behind, or simply never had the technology at scale... Then Elon built it in America