The Curious, Crumbling Cult of Elon Musk

Despite his bizarre behavior, Musk has done some things that inspire people, such as:

1. mainstreaming electric cars

2. developing the first reusable orbital rocket

3. starting development of a new rocket (Starship) that could dramatically lower the cost of space access

Despite the insane things he says and does, the Starship plan is remarkably pragmatic -- the Department of Defense asked the question of "How do you dramatically lower launch costs" and the resulting report describes something very much like the Falcon/Starship plan but says that "it will never happen because of misaligned incentives".

In particular, programs such as the X-33 and the National Aerospace Plane bet the farm on sexy technologies that were difficult if not impossible to develop. Musk gave up on single-stage-to-orbit even if it means developing two launch vehicles. SSTO is just so hard that it gets in the way of reusability. Same with aerospike engines, scramjets, composite fuel tanks, etc.

From my perspective the "pedo guy" and other stupid incidents endanger the positive goals that he's working on. If there is any way he's going to "lose Mars" it will be trying to out-Trump Trump.