[eplanit]

Those self-landing Falcon rockets don't impress you? Those capabilities sounded like exaggerated concepts not too long ago. Tesla cars and solar -- truly helping humanity move from fossil fuels (truly like in reality, at large scale), and now StarLink... Yeah, I'd say his outcomes are pretty good.

Musk makes Jobs and Gates look like under-achievers.

[LightG]

Nope.

The staff at Spacex impress the hell out of me. Likewise at Apple. Sure, Jobs, Musk, et al are catelising figures, but please ...

[ItsMonkk]

I've watched a decent amount of Jobs interviews, and I think you are down-playing the importance of this effect. He was a jerk, but he could spot talent, feverishly go after it, and then allow it to shine by giving it some of the most impactful problems that humanity is facing. Somehow he was able to wield a big company like most people could only handle small companies.

I don't know how many people have this skill, and you first require to have a ton of capital at hand to make use of it, but of the people in the world who have that capital this skill seems rather rare.

[leg100]

Quite. When he said on SNL "I re-invented electric cars", I thought yes, you and 1000s of very smart engineers at Tesla did, not you alone.

The leaders at the top of these companies get way too much credit for "having the vision". The vision too mostly likely came from many individuals who are not in the limelight and don't have the connections nor the cash.

Musk otherwise comes across as vulgar and insecure.

[peter422]

I used to get bothered by this as well, but you’ve got to get over it. Most of the time the thousands of people don’t want to be in the limelight and it is better for the product/company to have a good and smart leader out there touting it without saying every single time that actually they didn’t do that much and Bill and Mary and Chloe and 500 other people actually did all the work.

Look, we all know Musk and other CEOs didn’t invent these products/ideas on their own but storytelling is a big part of leadership.

[nnamtr]

Those rockets impress me, but Elon Musk did not construct them. The NASA (and also the soviet union) managed to do equally great things without someone like him in past.

> Tesla cars -- truly helping humanity move from fossil fuels

It would be much more effective to use bicycle and trains wherever possible, and drive small cars otherwise. But wait ... that's not luxurious enough. Saving the world is just an excuse for cool cars.

> and now StarLink

... to make the last corner of the world addicted to the internet and pay money to Musk.

[Gwypaas]

The true achievement is not the capability of the rockets, it is the huge reduction in cost compared to government contracts. This is even excluding the reusability.

The development costs for Falcon 9 v1.0 were approximately US$300 million, and NASA verified those costs. If some of the Falcon 1 development costs were included, since F1 development did contribute to Falcon 9 to some extent, then the total might be considered as high as US$390 million.[14][2]

NASA also evaluated Falcon 9 development costs using the NASA‐Air Force Cost Model (NAFCOM)—a traditional cost-plus contract approach for US civilian and military space procurement—at US$$3.6 billion based on a NASA environment/culture, or US$$1.6 billion using a more commercial approach.[15][14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_v1.0

Cited from https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Section403(b)...

[nnamtr]

We were never talking about costs, we were talking about how visionary Elon Musk is. However, while it's great if money is saved, again: is it really the achievement of Elon Musk, or would any private company be able to hold down costs?

[inglor_cz]

"would any private company be able to hold down costs?"

Most space startups died without ever reaching orbit. One of the reasons why SpaceX has such a reputation is precisely that it stands so far apart from its competition.

[doggosphere]

Nobody was working on self landing rockets. Nobody was working on electric cars.

We'd be waiting another 10 years for what we have today.

[andy_jensen]

"Nobody was working on self landing rockets"

Thats just plain wrong

https://youtu.be/39cjZTCay24

[grey-area]

Musk bought Tesla from someone else, he didn't found it (though he now calls himself founder).

[marvin]

You figure Tesla would be the in the world's top 10 companies by market cap today if Musk hadn't invested and run it, and the company was still run my Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard?

I mean...it's hard to prove a negative, but just to mention one of the tens of critical moments along the way, I have a hard time seeing how someone less ruthless than Musk would have saved them from bankruptcy in 2008.

Another obvious juncture was the whole thing about building a battery factory costing more than the company's market cap a few years prior, doubling the world's battery production capacity...

[Gwypaas]

This is simply a myth being propagated to detract Musk's early involvement in Tesla. It simply would not be the Tesla we know today without his involvement.

Musk simply led all funding rounds up to series C, was employee number 4, chairman of the board and took an extremely active role in the company before becoming the CEO. He and the first five employees are "co-founders" agreed to in court by Eberhard which is the one of the guys you are talking about.

A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five (Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk and Straubel) to call themselves co-founders.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...

[hooande]

"nobody was working on electric cars"?

[doggosphere]

Where was Ford, Toyota, GM's progress on electric cars? Where are all the other startups that started at the same time as Tesla?

Do you think Tesla would be where it's at today if Musk didn't get involved? How many times did Tesla almost die?

[brianwawok]

Well, what other private company is launching rockets at the pace and cost of SpaceX? Some are trying!

[ericd]

I love trains, and would love to see proper high speed rail in the US, but let's be honest, that's primarily a political problem, and I don't expect to see it within the next 30 years.

[nnamtr]

I'm living in Europe, and the situation seems better over here. While going by car is cheaper and faster in most cases, train is not much worse.

At least Biden seems to be a supporter of the railway. But it could go faster if you'd build tracks instead of tunnels with Teslas.