Maybe 'charlatan' is unfair, but he's certainly more of a sales-and-hype man than a real engineering type. I don't understand why so many technical people are snowed by his razzle dazzle.
Regardless of how we characterize Musk, however, reducing the issue at hand to a pro/anti Musk ad hominem argument is a distraction and a waste of time. It is suddenly relatively cheap to put a huge number of small satellites in low earth orbit. This creates a conflict with astronomical interests. What remains is a policy debate worth having.
SpaceX's statement may be ignorant, erroneous, or even deceitful. I have no doubt that the astronomy community identified the problem immediately and has been trying to bring it to public attention. However, as with light pollution at both optical and radio frequencies, they are relatively powerless compared to the interests with which they are in conflict. If the FCC is the arbiter of how many satellites a company can launch into LEO, they have already lost. This was a regulatory and legislative battle that they needed to be fighting, and probably were fighting, and basically had very little chance of winning unless they were somehow able to mobilize public support for earth-based astronomy against the telecommunications industry.
Acting like he hitched his flag to an already successful company is disingenuous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Early_history
> In October of that year, Musk made the decision that X.com would terminate its other Internet banking operations and focus on the PayPal money service.[25] In the same month, Elon Musk was replaced by Peter Thiel as CEO of X.com. The X.com company was then renamed PayPal in 2001,[26] and expanded rapidly throughout the year until company executives decided to take PayPal public in 2002.
But I dislike your assertion that just because SV companies feel free to rewrite their history, we should consider that canonical.
It's totally valid to point out that Musk wasn't a founder, though using it as some kind of slight is juvenile.
eBay is free to claim it was invented to sell Pez dispensers and we're free to point out that's PR spin. Neither side is in the wrong.
I was just explaining how to not embarrass yourself.