[mlindner]

> Some of the criticism of his behavior is clearly sour grapes that he doesn’t act “properly” for a billionaire, but there are also many examples of him being a bad person a la Steve Jobs.

If we can get a massively successful revolutionary business like SpaceX without someone like Steve Jobs I'd love it. But so far the sample size is small and there aren't any countering examples. History has thus far shown that you need people with strong personality and drive with some amount of lack of empathy in order to create massive shifts in the course of humanity.

[hef19898]

SpaceX is impressive, no doubt about that. But all we got from it so far is, maybe, cheaper orbital launches. Even without SpaceX we would get stuff into space, we did before already so.

[mlindner]

It's also galvanized an entire industry that was basically completely stagnant before SpaceX. The number of space-related and space-adjacent startups is skyrocketing. People figured out, because of SpaceX, that you can actually make a profitable business out of space that isn't just government contracts.

Also, SpaceX isn't done.

[hef19898]

People figured out that, if you manage to pull of a Musk impression, investors are willing to part with shit tons of money for space start ups. Whether any of those will work out or not is still not answered. Nor is the question if there is enough actual demand for all those small payload launches, SpaceX is launching their own Starlink satellites (and may well dump that business on retail investors) and if the other businesses currently paying for those small payload launches are themselves profitable isn't sure neither.

[mlindner]

I'm not talking about launch companies. I'm talking about all the other space companies, many of which you probably haven't heard of. SpaceX has enabled an entire new generation of startups that are making use of cheaper launch costs.