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Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

Not close to the same thing.

Musk has a history of building and shipping successful products company after company in spite of a constant amount of people saying he would fail. (X.com, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Boring).

Nikola is a complete fraud that collected money from know-nothing investors riding on EVs and Tesla's name. They haven't shipped anything and probably never will. Bizarrely positively portrayed in the press alongside negative Tesla stories - I imagine because it's good for clicks?

I find it hard to believe the SPAC that brought them public wasn't solely for the purpose of allowing them to steal as much as they could from the public before they shut down. No idea how well they played it - I guess we'll see if anyone ends up in prison.

At least he got to con his way into a fancy ranch in the mean time: https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-11-1...

People like this make the world worse for the rest of us (and make it harder for honest startups to raise money).

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Honestly it's testament to the people in Musk's inner circle and his engineering departments more than the man himself. I'd say he is really good at associating with clever people and organizing collaborations. At the end of the day, he is a billionaire who makes headlines because of the irony of the fact that he probably has ADHD and trolls on twitter and seemingly doesn't care about his reputation, while also heading all these companies. He's a loudmouth cowboy, which is like the archetype American hero.

Some people are attracted to rich arrogance more than anything. It's why people pay money to read fluff piece autobiographies ghostwritten for billionaires. It's why people like martin shkreli still have strong fanbases on the internet. Tesla may be a good company, but good companies are not built by one person, and fanboys are usually blind to that fact.

Doesn't the job of a CEO basically come down to:

  1. Don't (permanently) run out of money
  2. Get a bunch of capable people together and organized
  3. Point them in a good direction

By those measures, he's killed it repeatedly.

> Doesn't the job of a CEO basically come down to:

> 1. Don't (permanently) run out of money

> 2. Get a bunch of capable people together and organized

> By those measures, he's killed it repeatedly.

The problem with fraud and lies is not that they don't work. They work great. That's the entire reason people do them.

The problem is that they stop working after a while.

The dream scenario for fraudulent fundraising is that you make so much money with your pitch that you can make your lies a reality before too many people catch on.

As anyone who is familiar with kickstarter knows, it rarely works out that way.

The GP is defending Musk not Nikola.

The question is when extreme risk becomes outright fraud.

So if any random startup with some guy/gal with some positive track record claims that they'll do X ... let's say Magic Leap claims they'll paint black, or Openwater claims they'll read minds without invasive surgery just with IR light and an ungodly amount of CT-like singal processing for image reconstruction (founded by Mary Lou Jepsen, who has pretty extensive "moonshot creds" by creating the Pixel Qi display, which I knew nothing about until recently), etc.

At what point this becomes fraud? Well, of course we know the moment the founder/employees/interested-parties start faking things that are not true. Yes, sure, but when does simply painting a rosy picture becomes Theranos-level scam? After all Theranos' founder convinced seemingly competent people when she was 19 old about something truly risky. How? Her father was a vice president at Enron. Also she had Stanford's name next to her. (She got Channing Robertson, her ex-advisor and dean of School of Engineering at Stanford, to back her idea in or before 2005.)

And all is well as long as the founder is truthful, even if he/she is extremely biased. (As in we'll make this work by next week. And next week they say they'll make it work next week. Repeat a thousand times. No problem, because being a maximally biased estimator is not in itself being untruthful. Even if it's an extreme sign of metacognitive defects.) The problem starts when the founder claims that something works in such and such way, but that's not actually the case.

I think even the very murky territory of not disclosing previous failures can be simply signs of bias. (As in I'm not telling you about how we fucked up the last twenty iterations of our magical product, because I think the tests were very bad, and you'd get a very unfair impression of our marvelous idea, so I'll just say we're working on it, and let you decide solely based on that.) Of course if you agree to report progress, you agree to keeping lab notes, but then you destroy them or purposefully stop writing notes, that's bad.

I don't know anything about Nikola, other than that they are pushing hydrogen fuel cells and battery powered vehicles, plus building their own water-splitter network along key routes.

4. Repeatedly accomplish the above with people and a constantly changing environment

Musk has history of building and shipping products, yes.

But he's also no stranger to fraud, lies and defrauding investors. Solar roof is best example of that ([1] and [2] talk about it, but there's more stories about it).

Solar roof was 100% fake product, that was shown only to justify fraudulently bailing out his other insolvent business. Years later, Tesla still doesn't have solar roof product (they do some solar roof installation, of roof made by Changzhou Almaden, Chinese company [3]).

[1] https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/08/28/1566985766000/The-gre...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/solarcity-was-in...

[3] https://www.pv-tech.org/news/changzhou-almaden-supplying-tes...

Tesla buying Solar City was put to a shareholder vote (I voted yes along with the majority). Those shareholders should be happy now with the outcome of letting Musk do what he wants.

I'm not convinced any of this rises to fraud and none of it is close to what Nikola is doing here.

The solar roof also does exist and they install it, I'm not sure how that's fraud? https://www.tesla.com/solarroof because they buy parts from China?

> Tesla buying Solar City was put to a shareholder vote (I voted yes along with the majority).

Elon staged fake product presentation a month before the vote to gain support for the acquisition [1].

> Those shareholders should be happy now with the outcome of letting Musk do what he wants. > I'm not convinced any of this rises to fraud and none of it is close to what Nikola is doing here.

It's not a fraud because it worked? Same as Nikola - if they end up delivering some products in the end and their stock will keep on going up, then they it doesn't matter that they lie now?

> The solar roof also does exist and they install it, I'm not sure how that's fraud? https://www.tesla.com/solarroof because they buy parts from China?

Tesla still doesn't produce any type of solar roof, that was suppose to be their huge technological advantage. It's same as if Nikola instead of producing their vehicles will become dealership for Nissan Leaf.

Main difference between Nikola and Tesla now is that Tesla did deliver some products so far, but both companies are using hype and lies to gather funds and generate more hype. Given how much founding Nikola gathered so far, unless the whole EV bubble explodes, they'll also likely deliver some products.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/musk-deposition-stockholders...

> Elon staged fake product presentation a month before the vote to gain support for the acquisition.

> It's not a fraud because it worked?

It's not fraud because I don't buy your claim that it was a fake product presentation solely to gain acquisition support and the article you link doesn't even support that.

> Main difference between Nikola and Tesla now is that Tesla did deliver some products so far

"Some products" - they've sold hundreds of thousands of cars, built out a supercharging network, and a battery factory, while also making progress on autonomous driving at the same time. They were the first to prove this market against enormous odds and constant negative press.

Nikola has produced nothing but bullshit. I think the Tesla stock is crazy right now and I also think Elon's timelines are often unrealistic, but the amount of anti-elon anti-tesla sentiment in the face of success after success against enormous odds is wild to me.

> It's not fraud because I don't buy your claim that it was a fake product presentation solely to gain acquisition support and the article you link doesn't even support that.

"Shareholders also allege in the suit that Musk planned the unveiling of a product that didn’t yet function"

This allegation is based on what they already admitted to:

"Still, the company does acknowledge that the demos Musk unveiled at Universal Studios were not functional" [1]

> "Some products" - they've sold hundreds of thousands of cars, built out a supercharging network, and a battery factory, while also making progress on autonomous driving at the same time. They were the first to prove this market against enormous odds and constant negative press.

Tesla did a lot of good stuff, I'm not denying it, and they've made EV cars desirable for certain people. But it doesn't change the fact, that their operating mode is "fake it till you make it". And they sometimes do, often don't. They also "had" coast to coast self driving car since 2017, battery changing, alien dreadnought factory, with robots speed limited only by air resistance, panel gaps that are snake chargers, 620 miles range in 2017, 500k model 3 per year in Fremont, ventilators production, etc, etc.

> Nikola has produced nothing but bullshit. I think the Tesla stock is crazy right now and I also think Elon's timelines are often unrealistic, but the amount of anti-elon anti-tesla sentiment in the face of success after success against enormous odds is wild to me.

Because Elon and Tesla is massively overpromising. To point, that they're straight up lies.

Do they deliver some good stuff in the end, and have areas where they actually have technology advantage? Often they do, yeah. But that doesn't make up for the fact, that their business is build on hype and overselling their abilities in all the areas.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40422084/inside-steel-pulse-the-...

When Dropbox was presented to the VCs, I think it was just a powerpoint. Does that mean that it was fake ( according to your logic). Musk is just using standard startup methods used in modern startups.

It all depends on what the actual claim is. If Dropbox said look we did the math, did some ghetto-testing with mockups and an IT guy up-downloading your stuff in the background using ssh and sftp and hardcoding the filenames into todd.html and jane.html, and we think it'll be amazing, give muniz kthxbai. That's okay.

If did a demo with that method while claiming that it's the real thing running on 100 servers already with thousands of users ... well, that would be fraud.

What Musk communicated (said, implied, gesticulated, telepathed) at that demo regarding Solar Roof? He mentions production process, implying that it's real. He talks a lot about an integrated future, blabla. Is it a concept unveiling like what automakers do each year that then becomes nothing? Well, not exactly after all they take deposits for it. But "obviously" it's dumb. Having so many small tiles just kills cost efficiency. (Because every tile basically has a panel and needs a small connector, makes roofing slower, etc.)

I'm fairly sympathetic to the claim that all these startups are big piles of BS .. but at the same time it's not like they are so different from what other companies pull off as business-as-usual. See Google's demos that then go nowhere. See how phone and laptop makers over-promise and then constantly under-deliver, let's say with regard to battery capacity and life. Or game companies releasing trailers and doing demos at E3 and then years later the product is nowhere near finished and eventually the finished looks much worse.

You don't need to manufacture a product to sell it. He might have been developing it, then someone beat him to it. Instead of spending on R&D, he gets to just buy it from a manufacturer and use his name to sell thousands.

This. If you have done research and know that you can build it for sure, then you already have a product. It doesn't matter if it has not been manufactured.

> Solar roof was 100% fake product

They have a number of installations in California that were done for real clients and are fully functional. It may not be viable or scalable, but it is absolutely not fake. It is an actual product that works.

What they install now is Chinese solar roof. What they Elon showed during presentation was 100% fake.

"Still, the company does acknowledge that the demos Musk unveiled at Universal Studios were not functional"

(https://www.fastcompany.com/40422084/inside-steel-pulse-the-...)

Not yet manufactured doesn't is not the same as fake.

Would a business offering food replicators (the Trek kind that materialise energy into food) seem fraudulent to you? Would they be selling a fake product or just not have manufactured it yet?

The difference is intent. A company could be run by a crackpot who sincerely believes that he can create a food replicator and states irrelevant qualifications. His process involves spending day after day drawing paper schematics and putting it in a literal black box. It would never work and couldn't be manufactured but it wouldn't be fraud.

Making the same claims of goals and taking the money and running? Fraud.

What, in your mind, is fraud if announcing fake products as real does not qualify?

Jeez, what will it take to convince the Musk haters that he's the real deal? I mean, what does a guy have to do to prove it? Launch his car into Mars orbit using his own rocket? Oh wait....

You misread your third link. They supply the passive non-solar glass tiles, not the solar tiles. The solar tiles are manufactured in Boston.

Placing Neuralink and Boring on the list of successful companies is a bit premature.

Do neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech?

Demos of existing tech are even better than what Nikola has.

In general yes, but the Solar Roof Tile thing is still vaporware despite the demo.

> Do neuralink or boring have successful products? or just demos of already existing tech?

Are complex, difficult, expensive products or services usually built and launched quickly? Do they occasionally require long cycles of iteration? Maybe the iPhone should have been thrown away at version one.

It's 2005, does the Falcon 9 exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they could hardly launch the Falcon 1 without it exploding every time.

It's 2009, does the Model S exist yet? Geez, we're waiting. It's obviously all vaporware, a fraud, they'll never mass-manufacture electric vehicles.

The Boring company was also a fraud the way it was originally presented. Musk sold it as this unique new technology they were making, when in reality they had bought some 3rd party machines and flown them in from China.

More of a joke than deception. They sold flamethrowers for heaven’s sake.

Hyperloop isn't a fluke?

What's the fluke part exactly? It's perfectly doable, but the (risk-weighted) costs are just enormous.

Aren't neuralink and boring private corporations? Aren't billionaires allowed to throw money at whatever they fancy, and these kind questions specific to only public corporations?

They are undoubtedly allowed, but the question is important because OP mentioned Neuralink and Boring as things Musk "shipped".

I agree. Real artists ship. Musk ships.

If you change some people's names, company names and technology names, you could make this an article that's talking about Theranos.

How are you judging SpaceX, Neuralink, & Boring to be successes? They’re fine companies with good products, but none of them have fulfilled Musk’s original stated goals: going to Mars, transhumanism, and networks of tunnels for mass transit, respectively. When people say those companies will fail, I imagine the argument is that they won’t achieve these goals. Which, for the time being, is still true. Although it’s true that at least Musk actually builds things.

(Some bold takes? Level 5 self driving cars the way we commonly envision it won’t ever come to fruition, SpaceX will never go to Mars, transhumanism will never come to pass, and hyperloops won’t either. You can come back in 5 years and gloat if I’m wrong.)

That’s a fairly high bar. Musk’s vision is a 100 year vision, I don’t think anyone expects transhumanism in 2021.

Musk has been really bullish on AI. In 2015, he seemed pretty sure we’d have super intelligent AI in 5 years (ie now), and he worried about it which is why he started Neuralink. So he probably was hoping for transhumanism by 2021. That’s why I discount those who think Musk was scamming about self-driving being available soon. He was naive and he tricked himself. Don’t believe his time projections about anything like AI.

Doesn’t mean those goals won’t be achieved, even if they are late, tho.

Oh I will take the Mars bet. What are your terms? Want to longbets.org it?

I'd also totally take that Mars bet. But I wouldn't touch the other three bets, I think OP is on the right side of those.

SpaceX is an essentially unprecedented success by any reasonable definition of success in the modern space launch services market.

If you want to minimize their obvious accomplishments based on Musk's own incredibly ambitious long-term (decades out) goals, feel free, but that's pretty dumb because it's essentially meaningless relative to the rest of the market. If ULA were already sending colony ships to Mars, maybe you'd have a point, but they aren't.

> SpaceX is an essentially unprecedented success by any reasonable definition of success in the modern space launch services market.

Sure. I agree.

> minimize their obvious accomplishments based on Musk's own incredibly ambitious long-term (decades out) goals

Outside of the Silicon Valley bubble, that’s called “holding people accountable to the goals they set.” And I’m happy to give him decades, he still won’t achieve transhumanism, Mars travel, and the like.

You aren't "holding people accountable to the goals they set" in any useful way—and in return for the "Silicon Valley bubble" comment, which I suppose is meant as a slur against me for saying what I've said here, I'd like to invite you to get over yourself.

Setting extremely ambitious goals and trying your level best to achieve them is a virtue, not a vice. If you let some weird disdain for Silicon Valley (which is in fact a place/state of mind which I do not inhabit and whose culture I strongly dislike) rob you of your ability to get excited about great efforts toward building great things and/or solving great problems, that's nobody's problem but your own.

>Setting extremely ambitious goals and trying your level best to achieve them is a virtue, not a vice.

That only holds true up til the point where your loud (public) ambitious goals are the reason for ticket sales.

Once there is financial motive for setting ambitious goals, you lose credit for the ambition -- it becomes driven by profit.

SpaceX is literally taking queries for the sale of private Mars tickets[0].

I have a hard time considering the sale of tickets to a now-technologically-impossible-future-event that may be possibly hundreds of years away from our present time as altruistic.

If I made a website and sold tickets to the "Nicest place to sit and observe the apocalypse when it occurs." for hefty profits i'd be driven out of town. No way I could know where that might be or when it might occur; the entire premise is faulty.

A guy launches a rocket or two and suddenly his opinion, against the majority of the rest of science and engineering by the way, claims we're going to Mars soon.

Sure, he's more believable than some random person saying it, i'll give you that -- but the promise of Mars is something that I and many others consider to be so unlikely in the immediate future that we view the promise as akin to a lie or fraud; and Musk has done little to assuage the very real technical fears behind the mission other than with vagueties like "Well, it's an engineering challenge." or "We'll have to discover new ways of doing X".

Yes, that's true, new method and procedures will inevitably need to be developed -- but dismissing such feats as minor is not only in poor taste, but short-sighted when trying to plan a timeline for when these events may occur.

I think this shortsightedness is intentional, and for profit. He can claim the world, profit from it, and deliver very minimal results that are nothing compared to the promises.

You see this behavior over and over in the management of early Tesla, too.

[0]: https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/mars/

Does SpaceX really have the common man lining up to be fleeced for vaporware Mars tickets? Not really, as far as I can tell. They may have taken money from some very rich people who presumably understand the speculative nature of what they're paying for, e.g. the "Dear Moon" thing, which is by the way entirely within the realm of current technological possibility. We already sent humans to the moon, several times. Fifty years ago. SpaceX has definitively proven that they know how to build things that go up and things that come down and things that keep people alive in space. You do the math.

Beyond that, I really just don't see the angle of Musk as a con man. He's a maniac—literally, manic—and that certainly comes through in the aggressive and sometimes unrealistic nature of the promises he makes, but accusing him of being somebody who would settle for delivering "very minimal results" just seems to ignore the reality of the man himself, both the personality traits he's clearly displayed (and I don't mean that in an entirely positive way) and more importantly the results he's already delivered. They are not "minimal". He's delivered unprecedented upstart success and unprecedented innovations at scale in two markets that have been dominated by incumbents essentially since their inception. That's not a man looking to spin a web of lies and hype and then cash out. In fact he seems to be in a very small class of extant business leaders who've actually done something worth talking about besides being very rich and overseeing incremental (valuable or not) progress.

You and "many others" are free to think whatever you want about the technology, and I'd probably agree with you to some extent on many points, but it kind of undermines your status as an impartial skeptic when you show so clearly that you have an axe to grind. And why? I really just don't get it. I would never work for Musk in his current form, and I don't own any products made by any of his companies, and I think he's guilty of treating some of his factory workers quite badly, but I give credit where credit's due and you should, too. It's not about endorsing him, what he stands for, how he treats workers, his opinions on COVID-19, or whatever else—it's simply about seeing the world clearly.

They've already mass-produced orbital rockets which are the cheapest way to space, put a payload out past the orbit of Mars, landed multiple orbital boosters simultaneously and produced the first production full flow staged combustion engine. Alone those are incredible achievements but they also have a viable pathway to Mars, the Moon or other bodies in the solar system. I expect they'll land cargo around 2024 and send humans in the next few synods after that on a demo mission.

> SpaceX is literally taking queries for the sale of private Mars tickets[0].

The only thing close to 'private Mars tickets' is the footer which says: "For inquiries about our private passenger program, contact sales@spacex.com". That sounds like a very generic "If your problem is having too much money, we can help!" kind of sales pitch.

> If I made a website and sold tickets to the "Nicest place to sit and observe the apocalypse when it occurs." for hefty profits i'd be driven out of town.

If you're a company that sells private bunkers and you have a page on your website about a possible apocalypse, then no one will fault you for having a generic "For inquiries about our private bunker program, contact sales@bunkerx.com" footer.

You set goals and work towards them.

Becoming an inter-planetary species doesn't happen in a year.

I want SpaceX to succeed and they have a track record of execution such that I now believe they really can. I was hopeful before (and if you listen to Musk talk about it he didn't think they'd be able to really pull it off early on either but figured they'd at least make progress towards it even if they failed), but now I think a mars colony is a real possible outcome.

It's not a bold take to just state something is impossible until it happens, that's pretty much the default.

The bold take is to look at what might be possible and execute goals in pursuit of that.

For SpaceX this means reusable rocket technology to bring costs down (massive success here has them ahead of everyone else). Starlink as a revenue source is also a really good approach.

For Tesla it's the 'master plan' of roadster -> model s -> model 3, reinvesting in infrastructure and battery technology with vertical integration to build out superchargers and drive costs down. This has been massively successful and their EVs (particularly the model3/y) have no equal at any price point EV or gas. The level 5 autonomy was really a bonus on top of that EV transition that they've added to, and if anyone can pull it off it will be Andrej Karpathy and the fleet of Tesla's they can train with (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7BXih7zx8).

Bullshit and really big ideas can sound similar, but that doesn't mean they are - there's a lot of value in being able to tell the difference.

In the case of Nikola, they're just lying to enrich themselves and taking advantage of those that can't see the difference between a person like Trevor Milton and a person like Elon Musk.

I agree with you that they’re working towards these goals. And there’s obviously a ton of daylight between Musk and Milton.

But the point I’m making is more specific than that: you can’t call them successes because they haven’t achieved their goals yet. (But they haven’t failed yet, either. The jury is still out.)

This is just disputing definitions: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...

As far as daylight between Musk and Milton, it's not a matter of degree, but one of kind.

SpaceX is unquestionably a success at this point, although their end goal is probably something that will take longer than a single lifetime. Boring and Neuralink are still early, and Neuralink may also be one of those century-long things.

Tesla and SpaceX have both achieved their original nearer term vehicles, Dragon/ F9/FH plus Model S, X, and 3. Full reuse and full autonomy currently are still out of reach, but both of those are incredibly ambitious that no one else is super close to doing, either.

Both Tesla and SpaceX are very successful, but of course Musk keeps raising the bar on what he considers success.

Like I said, they’re fine companies. And they’re doing innovative things!

But you’ll have forgive me if I hold Musk to public promises he’s made, especially regarding self driving cars & Mars. At a certain point, what’s the difference between making a bold promise and telling a lie? It’s difficult to judge people’s intentions.

Is it a lie to set as a goal for your company something that will take longer than one lifetime?

It’d be a lie if they weren’t taking steps necessary for that goal. It’s not a lie to have a large, even an unlikely, goal.

Starship, in particular, isn’t really needed for a conventional space business case. Falcon 9 is sufficient for that. Starship (as envisioned) is either too big or too reusable. The only thing it makes sense for is the grand, multi-generational vision.

Musk doesn’t think that they’ll take a lifetime. He thinks SpaceX should reach Mars in 4 years & transhumanism should arrive next year, for example.

Reaching Mars in 4 years is the goal. He has always thought that was a stretch goal, as has been clear on every single presentation he has given on the topic. (BTW, NASA has a stretch goal of 2024 for landing people on the Moon; they acknowledge it is a stretch goal, and it probably also will be years later. Does that make NASA liars?)

But I'd say there's a greater than 50/50 chance of SpaceX landing people on Mars in Musk's lifetime. But that's not even THAT remarkable... Their actual goal (self-sustaining Mars civilization of at least a million people) is 5-6 orders of magnitude grander than that, and almost certainly won't occur in Musk's lifetime. Musk acknowledges that.

> Does that make NASA liars?

No. It makes them not-successful. Which also applies to SpaceX in that regard.

> Their actual goal (self-sustaining Mars civilization of at least a million people) is 5-6 orders of magnitude grander than that, and almost certainly won't occur in Musk's lifetime. Musk acknowledges that.

His stated goal is to do this by 2050. That’s within his lifetime (I hope).

> His stated goal is to do this by 2050. That’s within his lifetime (I hope).

(Responding to your claim elsewhere since reply isn't allowed there)

Incorrect. That's not Musk's stated goal. What he said was:

"Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital sync" - [0]

Nothing at all about having a million people on Mars in 2050. To get a million people to Mars requires ten Earth-Mar orbital syncs, or 20 years. Adding 10 years to get to that 1000 Starships/year cadence. That means they have to achieve 100 Starship/years by 2022 to have a shot at sending a million people to Mars by 2052 (because the next orbital sync is 2022)

Starship hasn't flown yet with the first orbital flight hopefully some time next year. It will be well into 2020s, at the earliest, to get to 100 starships/year production rate. Musk knows that and he didn't state otherwise.

[0] - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217989066181898240

It's a lie when they tell you you can buy a car ready for full self driving when that will take longer than one lifetime, yes.

SpaceX promises or goals or whatever are less egrigious. It's clearly providing a useful service (stuff to orbit for less money), but nobody is giving them a bunch of money today for a ride to Mars maybe later. Same with the Boring Company; it'll become egregious if they trick a municipality into paying for something, or leave an unfinished tunnel sitting around for years and years (but longer than the Seattle tunnel, cause even non-imaginary tunnel machines have problems)

> Some bold takes

Nothing bold about saying people won’t achieve goals and then disclaiming it saying people can gloat in 5 years if you’re wrong. That’s cowardly, the opposite of bold.

Musk said the first passengers could go to Mars in 2024, which is 4 years from now. So I’m being generous. Hasn’t he repeatedly proved everyone wrong? Where does the quote “Never bet against Elon” come from? I’m being quite bold.

But you’re right on the other points —- I’m willing to extend the timeframe for self driving to 10 years and transhumanism to 20. And to be even bolder, I’ll let you pick a timeline for the Hyperloop.

SpaceX is ridiculously successful. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are now as reliable as the best competitors and are so much cheaper than their competitors it's not even funny.

SpaceX didn't lower Falcon 9 launch prices because the market is willing to pay their current price, but they sell something that costs them about $20M for $70M (competition's price is at $100M) and they sell something that costs them about $40M for $150M (competition's price is at $400M).

ULA (Boeing and Lockheed Martin partnership that used to have US monopoly) only exists today because the US federal government needs dissimilar redundancy, so that if something bad happens on a launch, the other provider's system can launch stuff while the first one is investigating and fixing the issue. Without this requirement, ULA would have been closed. Same for Boeing's CST-100. Same for Northrop Grumman's Antares and Cygnus. Same for Orbital's Dream Chaser. Boeing's SLS and LockMart's Orion cash cows will be shut down if Starship proves reliable.

Starship is much more speculative/ambitious and will require a bunch more iterations before they make it work. There will definitely be failures along the way, hopefully without loss of human life but that's not guaranteed. If they don't go bankrupt before they make it work, a fully rapidly reusable Starship (150 tons to orbit for just a few million bucks) will make all other rocket technology completely antiquated, 100x cheaper is too much to bear for national pride reasons.

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