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Comment by kisstheblade | Hacker News Reader

Really? In 5 years ROCKETS will be as safe as airplanes? And as cheap? And possible to fly over cities etc (talking about Shotwells promises here)? You really think this?

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I hate framing it this way but your passionate hating has me doing it - do you build rockets? Or cars? What exactly do you do that gives you such certainty in bringing down these people who have already achieved so much? Their "dream big" mentality is sorely lacking in a society full of cynical, dead eyed and uncreative drones focused on nothing but financing their own survival or excesses. Applaud it, don't try to bring it down. There's literally no point. At a minimum they inspire others to get out there and get after it tackling problems.

The real problem with Musk is that he seems to be a narcissist and a good hypeman.

His achievements are that he invested in the right companies and then he ousted the original visionaries / founders... and finally claiming he is the founder... see Tesla.

Also a real leader usually gives credit where credit is due. Not once have I seen where Musk has credited his team.

And don't get me started with how he's calling a rescue diver a pedo, because his idea of his rescue submarine was rejected. Fragile ego is a dangerous thing.

He wants to be seen as a real life Tony Stark. It's more about him, not really about moving humanity forward, that's just a side effect.

Both can be true at the same time.

He has a fragile ego and weird behavior on the social networks. At the same time, SpaceX is by far the most successful of all the space startups that have emerged in this century. Most of its competitors are not even unsuccessful, but outright dead. Blue Origin, financed by Bezos, hasn't yet managed to reach the orbit after 22 years of operation.

Yes, it is possible that random forces of luck selected SpaceX for a string of successes. But I think it is deeper than that. Musk has an ability to attract engineering talent and give it enough leeway so that interesting concepts may emerge. Shotwell has an ability to keep the company financially sound and on track.

SpaceX is in big part successful through what looks like corrupt self-dealing and fraud. They bailed out SolarCity with NASA funded bonds and then instead of taking the L when SolarCity was to go bankrupt, Tesla bailed them out with a fake demo of non-functionable solar shingles followed by an acquisition.

SpaceX has delivered fundamental breakthroughs in commercial space launch. Any analysis of the company that omits this is extremely disingenuous and makes me suspect ignoble motivations behind the critique.

If Theranos had a breakthrough other parts could still have been fraud.

he credits his team in every speech he gives, and thanks the team constantly on twitter.

From what I can tell Musk is literally a founder of SpaceX. I know he was a dick to the founders of Tesla, and he deserves shit for that, but it is a fact that Tesla has come very far since then under his leadership, and any claim that the founders would have done better is pure speculation. And of course the teams at these companies deserve credit, which he consistently admits. People who are obsessed with tearing down Tesla/SpaceX are often inconsistent in that any good thing these companies do cannot be attributed at all to Elon, because “he’s just a grifter hypeman, the team/other founders deserve the credit”, but any bad press they get is somehow entirely Elon’s fault. The truth is just that he’s partially responsible for all the good and the bad.

From accounts of people who have actually worked with him, he’s a legitimately smart guy with a laser focus on executing, albeit a micromanager. All the people I’ve seen saying he’s just some idiot MBA type who doesn’t actually believe what he’s selling are random media personalities and pundits. I can’t claim to know which is true, but one is certainly more credible than the other.

Good points. I was only talking about Tesla.

What I was trying to get across is that a founder's own value system and motivations of why a founder is doing a thing are an important factor for the longevity of a company.

To me it appears that Musk is only in it for himself and his legacy. Eventually this will become more apparent and the loyalty and followership he's enjoying will drop.

He's more of a hypeman than a true visionary.

See how he hyped up his other ventures... solar city, self-driving cars you can make money with, electric trucks, hyperloop, etc... still waiting for that self-driving car which should be available 'next year' and that was in 2018 or something.

Is there a way to save comments so I can come back and laugh at them when I'm feeling down?

Just hit on the upvote button and then you can find them in your upvoted comments list ;)

Thank you! Push back against the tide of unrelenting cynicism :)

You should actually watch the presentation. All these questions are answered.

*reusable rockets. Rocket launches are associated with very high costs because rockets have historically been one-time use.

Reusable rockets aren't coincidentally many orders of magnitude safer though. They would need to be just to come even with airplanes. It would also involve acceleration forces far beyond anything a normal passenger would accept. I'd be glad to be wrong, but I have yet to see an analysis that actually does the math and doesn't result in something along the lines of "this concept is insane and doomed to fail". Spaceship would probably make a good spaceship. But using it for quick flights between cities is less realistic than airlines reviving the Concorde.

" They would need to be just to come even with airplanes."

Airplanes of the 1950s or airplanes of the 2020s? That is a huge difference.

It took the aviation industry 120 years to arrive at current levels of safety.

Very true. Though the high costs historically associated with rocket launches have precluded the kind of scale needed to achieve extreme safety. This will change if SpaceX succeeds with Starship, though of course it will take a long time to iterate enough on safety to achieve the extremely high standard seen in aviation, or at least as high of a standard as is possible with rocket transportation, and then establish a long enough track record that consumers can trust it.

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