[nickik]

The reality is that Elon is and was the Chief Engineer for the Falcon rocket family. He had the vision, the finance and he lead the engineering effort extremely directly and successfully. He overruled his top guys on multiple decisions and usually he turned out to be right.

Go listen to Tom Mueller on the design choices made for the Merlin example.

But of course nobody does everything himself, but for some reason I read this sort of comment made about Musk in every single thread but not with most other people.

[dingaling]

Mr Musk has strategic vision, but not necessarily engineering vision. Which is fine, engineering is a huge field.

Bear in mind that the first time one of his staff proposed verticals landing rocket stages, he laughed.

[throwaway84742]

He does have a degree in physics though. So he probably has a pretty good grasp on the concepts involved, as well as a finely tuned bullshit detector.