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Comment by afterburner | Hacker News Reader

> Imo Elon is starting to get into contention for greatest engineer of all time.

I don't know man, did he design it himself?

Depends how you define "design". Most engineers I know are not involved in the bog-standard design, but rather when the decisions get outside the comfort zone of the designers (either engineers or engineering techs themselves). From all accounts ("Switching to stainless steel is one of the best design decisions I've ever made"[1], comments from Tom Mueller about Elon leading the design team on Raptor[2]), Musk is performing the role of a head engineer.

Many jurisdictions would still have an issue with him using the title engineer. (edit: it's recently been determined to infringe on first amendment rights [3]. Still applies in Canada)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/davt2l/cnn_intervie... timestamp around 2:30

[2] https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560

[3] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yw798m/oregon-unconstitut...

Dan Rasky's description[1] of the make-or-buy decision on the PICA heat shield perhaps illustrates a bit of it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU&list=PLpEqMkxe7X... (From the "Dan Rasky: SpaceX's Collaborative Design Approach" video of the "COTS: Dan Rasky" playlist of "Knowledge @ NASA".)

Meta-engineer? Engineering executive? At least he's trying to advance humanity instead of squandering it all on yachts like almost all the rest of the world's billionaires.

Lets be honest, he's kinda transcended all definitions, and that is necessary to be the kind of full picture problem solver that he is... Gain all the information about the problem areas in all contexts from your experts, while having executive authority to execute radical solutions.

I think visionary is the best descriptor and there aren't too many of those folks alive at a given time that are properly placed to execute, and even fewer who actually DO execute.

I was as entranced with the possibility of a permanent extraterrestrial base while watching the presentation last night as I was when I saw the boosters land tandem style in 2018.

What an amazing thing to see happen, the people Elon has brought together have done amazing things on the shoulders of already incredible work.

Is there a Woz behind Musk?

If he didn't design it himself, the people he hired and gave overall direction to did. And they are doing way better than anyone else, which means he must have done a better job of hiring and directing than anyone else.

Is there any reason to believe it would be happening now if he didn't exist?

Maybe not. That still doesn't qualify him as an Engineer, though.

I doubt SpaceX would be a thing if Elon didn't have engineering capabilities.

I have read that when he gets interested in a technical area, he reads a ton of books at a remarkably fast pace, remembers everything he reads, next analyses everything at a fundamental level, and finally comes up with a radically better plan than anyone else has before. I guess you could call that engineering capabilities.

I had three peers in my entire engineering classes like that. Two became PhDs, one has changed fields and applied himself rapidly.

I wasn't like them, but that ability to understand on a fundamental level, not forget, and then very quickly tackle more and more complex problems so fast was like a superpower. It took me much much longer, without the detailed understanding.

If that's not engineering I don't know what is.

he's intimately involved in every aspect of the design of the vehicles. For example, he's personally responsible for the change to steel construction and had to convince the rest of the team to switch from composites.

He is has been the Chief Designer for SpaceX since Falcon 1.

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