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Comment by loveparade | Hacker News Reader

You can hate Elon Musk as much as you want, but he absolutely knows a decent amount of Physics and Material Science. That's what he studied and has always wanted to do before PayPal. He even get into a Material Science PhD at Stanford. He drove a lot of the engineering at both Tesla and SpaceX. And without that, probably none of these companies would've worked out.

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he never got into stanford. he made that up. there is no record of his admittance. and court records show that stanford dean (under oath) had to admit that they couldn't locate them. do you have source on "drove a lot of engineering" claim? even if you worked at one of these, could you prove the other?

What is novel about driving engineering? It’s obvious he’s a highly involved CEO, and he actually understands and explains engineering decisions all the time. I hear all the time comments like “he doesn’t know anything about making rockets”. Tom Muller regularly has to comment on this noise. https://x.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929

Eric Berger’s book Liftoff details the early years of SpaceX based on interviews with the people involved. They all speak highly of Elon’s engineering expertise and the critical design decisions he made.

I have no inside information, but a biographical book written with exclusive interviews to the person basically means it's a PR book. It maybe also has interesting and true things, but that's like justifying that he knows engineering because his mom said so.

Eric Berger is a highly respected journalist. There was no editorial control from Elon/SpaceX.

I think you got that backwards. There's a quote here[1] (sourced from court documents) from the director of admissions at Stanford that he was admitted:

> Dear Elon,

> As per special request from my colleagues in the School of Engineering, I have searched Stanford's admission data base and acknowledge that you applied and were admitted to the graduate program in Material Science Engineering in 1995. Since you did not enroll, Stanford is not able to issue you an official certification document.

> Sincerely, Judith Haccou, Director

[1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/54065/did-elon-...

Another of Musk’s lies that keeps being propagated

“ In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University.[64][65] However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

Maybe read my comment again? There is no lie. I said accepted, not attended. And if you've ever tried to get into a PhD program at Stanford you'd know that isn't easy unless you have, you know, at least a little bit of knowledge of the field. So the parent claiming that Elon Musk doesn't even know basic Physics is blatantly wrong.

Sorry I misread that as “got a Material Science phd”

Great so now we're treating getting accepted to a PhD as though you actually completed one.

Virtually every STEM graduate from colleges like Stanford is eligible for a graduate program somewhere, it's not that big of a deal

Elon Musk has a degree in physics. So that addresses the original point. He knows basic physics.

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