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Comment by fsdjkflsjfsoij | Hacker News Reader

The criticisms are getting more and more comical. Michael is a friend of Elon and trusted Elon with many of his ideas and contacts. I'm sure Musk would say as much. Do you think Michael was sharing these ideas and contacts with just anyone? Why do you think he specifically chose to work with Elon?

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Mike saw Elon was good at recruiting Silicon Valley talent and selling the whole "save humanity by going to Mars" story (but even that was Mike's idea with Orbital).

"Elon hires people he doesnt do all the work!"

Yes thats why you hire people...to not do all the work. Im pretty sure Elon is aware of this.

There's nothing comical about it. They went to two different Russian firms to partner with before it was even called SpaceX and were turned down because Elon kept running his mouth on subjects he didn't understand and they lost all confidence in the project.

That just shows confidence isn't always a predictor of success. They made a bad call, quite obviously.

No, it does not. His plan was to build greenhouses on mars.

Their rejection of his idea is what inspired the pivot to build rockets instead.

What was he running his mouth about? Crazy stuff like landing boosters back at the pad, or on barges in the middle of the Atlantic?

No, his plan was to build greenhouses on Mars.

Perhaps that's just because he was talking to people who think another literal moonshot was a figurative moonshot.

Er, no. That was his stated goal as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors when these talks happened. He wanted to purchase a Dnepr ICBM and retrofit it for that purpose. When the deal was rejected, he discussed building his own rockets with Michael Griffin.

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