[gcb0]

> blames the driver

well, you are driving a car from a paypal mafia founder. why everyone forget that Musk started by ignoring banking regulations and mostly laundering money quasi legally, while later on holding funds from everyone for arbitrarily enforced rules, while completely ignoring user complaints. (bye HN karma :)

seriously, why is that everyone hates paypal ethics but loves musk and hold him as holy?

[WhompingWindows]

I think you're overestimating the amount that people hate paypal ethics. For instance, I don't know what you mean by ignoring banking regulations and laundering money quasi-legally? I read his biography written by Ashlee Vance and I don't think this was covered.

[goldenkey]

PayPal has changed a lot. Back when my parents sold thousands of items on eBay, PayPal would screw them over many many times, and not just with disputes - PayPal often locked funds for months without cause.

It is fairly easy to find out what PayPal used to be like when Musk ran it - just ask some older eBay sellers.

[paulie_a]

PayPal really hasn't changed that much. They still pull the same bullshit and if they went out of business tomorrow the world of ecommerce would be a better place

[reaperducer]

>PayPal often locked funds for months without cause.

Not unique to PayPal. Deposit a check of an amount that's unusual for your "profile" at Chase and it'll sit on the money for three weeks.

[goldenkey]

That's just a check clearing. Paypal would lock entire account funds, payment clearance was not an issue.

[reaperducer]

No, it's beyond check clearing. The check clears in two days, but Chase still sits on it for a while as a matter of policy.

[api]

He's driven the first major innovation in space flight since the 70s.

[dsl]

Except the space shuttle, international space station, mars missions, hubble telescope, and a dozen other things. But other than that, sure.

[mozumder]

My favorite is the DC-X that Space X and others are recreating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o

[api]

I was aware of the DC-X. It was tested in the 90s but it never went anywhere. Why didn't someone else do what SpaceX is now doing? They were too busy selling 70s tech and cashing checks.

When I said 'first new thing in aerospace since the 70s' I meant shipped. Things that never shipped don't exist.

The Shuttle I suppose could count but it was a mixed bag and in some ways a step backward from the Saturn V.

Seems like people have flipped from mindless Musk worship to being haters all the sudden.

Tesla may fail but they validated the market for high-end electric cars. Before Tesla the popular narrative was that EVs are impractical, slow, have poor range, and can't possibly ever compete with ICEs. People argued that modern transportation was absolutely and fundamentally inseparable from oil, even spinning this into popular peak oil doomsday narratives.

The biggest threat to Tesla today is that now that they've validated the market larger more experienced car companies are jumping on the EV bandwagon.

[MertsA]

Yeah, the DC-X was neat and all but that's suborbital on a stubby cone shaped rocket. That's essentially what New Shepard accomplished and not really comparable to actually recovering the first stage on a real orbital launch. As for the shuttle, well there's a reason why Buran wound up being nothing more than a hanger queen and it was arguably superior to the shuttle. From a practical perspective I think it's fair to say that SpaceX has been the largest impact in access to orbit since the 70s.

[jfoutz]

The Hubble is amazing, but i'm not sure how it advanced space flight. wasn't it a shuttle package? ISS was Soyuz and shuttle launches as well, if i recall correctly. So, yes, there is a ton of innovation is space 'stuff'. but space flight? that seems like more of a stretch to me.

Perhaps Delta and Atlas rockets were amazing innovations. They did great jobs with the recent mars missions. I don't recall getting particularly excited for many mars launches. (the missions were cool though).

Those boosters landing together though made me fell like a little kid watching a shuttle launch. But those boosters man. Maybe that's not innovation but that landing sure felt like a big moment to me.

I think the parent poster is trying to say, for a long time it felt like small refinements.

[JumpCrisscross]

Replace “space flight” with “launch vehicles” and it’s accurate. NASA stalled out in that department, between the Shuttle and SLS, due to bad management and politics.