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Comment by zanny | Hacker News Reader

He talks at length about the recent years of Armadillo, I think it is really interesting his gripe was a lack of oversight from his end when he wasn't active on site, while he was spending a million a year funding the project. I wonder how many of the startups around these parts could use that kind of lesson (ie, inverse of the overbearing boss).

I also love that John Carmack and Elon Musk are email buddies, and that even John Carmack isn't thinking big enough for Elon =P

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John Carmack isn't thinking big enough for Elon

A few years ago I had the same thought about Carmack. I wondered why he seemingly abandoned his vision for space travel by returning to work in the game industry on Rage. I figured Carmack probably realized that Elon's SpaceX was going to "win the race" and gave up. Or maybe Carmack is just getting old. Either way, he's still one of my heroes.

John is less than one year older than Elon. They are both hugely smart from a technology standpoint but John's knowledge goes very deep. John's focus is implementing the future of technology personally. Elon's focus is bringing sufficient capital to bring the technological future to the present.

Both came from game dev backgrounds. Carmack announced he was getting into rockets a couple of years before Musk sold paypay... and then got into rockets :)

I wouldn't be surprised if Carmack heavily inspired Musk. If not just with shareware, and online payments, then with rockets.

Also, the public .plan files he published in the 90s heavily inspired the web log/blog craze :)

These are interesting points. I think the crowd that wasn't on the web in the mid 90's may not understand just how influential Carmack was on so many of us.

Armadillo vs. SpaceX just seem like completely different scales of project. Like Armadillo had the kind of problems that hobbyists have, like they couldn't get a good enough quality of hydrogen peroxide, and they had problems sourcing tanks and such. SpaceX just throws money and people at those kind of problems.

Honestly I think it really is as simple as what he answered in this talk: he doesn't want to risk the money.

Elon on the other hand, has been willing to double down on bets involving 100's of millions of dollars or more. That speaks to a very different view of risk/reward between them (and not one I think is negative to either side).

Also, while Carmack is certainly enormously respected in his field, he hasn't worked much outside that. Elon's track record has diverse successes, and I think that means it's a lot easier for Elon to convince investors to join his endeavors.

I skimmed the talk and found the clip on Armadillo Aerospace.

It's slightly more than 10 minutes: http://www.twitch.tv/bethesda/b/439369577?t=2h04m56s

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