[nonesuchluck]

Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I said, because I did not claim Tesla or SpaceX invented anything brand new. I said they built existing inventions into viable products and brought them to market. They were each great ideas whose time had clearly come, and yet, no one was building them.

The examples I picked were historical inventions which were actually built by Trouvé and Bell, not merely conceptualized or patented. And we spent decades whining about GM killing the electric car blah blah, when all we needed was somebody to come along and actually do the heavy lifting.

To me, Elon Musk is the antithesis, rather than fulfillment, of the great man theory of history. In each case, somebody else would have gotten around to it, eventually, because the ideas were ripe. And yet, time and again, it's Musk there at the finish line, not somebody else.

And yeah, hyperloop-style systems have been built. That's the point. I don't think that's an idea worth stealing, but Elon does, and Elon has the $billions and the engineers to push it forward, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[sudosysgen]

An operational vacuum train has never been built. Operational vertical launch vertical landing rockets were built. Operational electric cars were built. Elon never built something no one built before.

Elon didn't even make Tesla ffs. He's not the one that decided to do something about GM killing the electric car and got the ball rolling. He was an investor.