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Comment by devoutsalsa | Hacker News Reader

Having to spend $15B as the cost for making an impulsive decision (when you can afford it) is a first world problem.

Tesla and SpaceX success is depending on the public opinion of Musk. If he ends up paying 15 billion (or whatever the number is) over a botched take over, one that had a negative impact on Tesla shares, this opinion might just change. In which case Teslas future preception as a tech company might be at risk.

> Tesla and SpaceX success is depending on the public opinion of Musk

No it does not, SpaceX results speak for themselves, they have no competition. Same with Tesla, just check their vehicles sold charts.

SpaceX competition: Arianne space and a bunch of upstarts, plus every other commercial launch service excluding the Russians at the moment.

Tesla's competition: every other car marker.

The other space companies don't have the cost structure advantages of reusability.

An advantage that we cannot be sure exists to begin with since SpaceX isn't piblishing financials. And for some launches Arianne Space is already now competitive using the Arianne 5, by all means an out dated design, one that was initially intended to carry a European space shuttle into space.

More generally so, I have no idea why people expect any company to own a market completely. Any market is usually big enough for one than one company to be successful.

Spacex has literally no competition. No one else has reusable rockets and starship will soon be a rapid reusable heavy launch vehicle.

Just pray that the cost isn't 10 times normal one and can only be used 9 times.

SpaceX's product isn't reusable launches it's just launches, the reusability is their competitive advantage. There's a lot of other launch providers out there.

It might also be the kind of wake-up call that gets him to be less impulsive.

When does a decisions stop being impulsive? Probably at point when enough lawyers are hired to write a contract...

It probably depends on how much you need to think about it. If you have a minion to whom you can say "I'd like to buy Twitter, go figure it out, then let me know where to sign", there's a lot of room for being impulsive.

It's also a world first problem

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