[planetsprite]

As much as people dislike Musk, he draws excitement and captivation not only to himself, but to whatever he touches. Now for the first time people actually care about the "future" of Twitter, or in a sense, have a vision for its future that isn't defined by its frequent moderation-related controversies.

Is Musk's financial success and unparalleled cultural relevance a science that can be replicated? I mean, as much as people don't like him he has gotten to a financial position where anything he wants seems easily achievable. Is it the fact that he always carries the implied promise of "bold new future that will change your life" more than any other cultural entity?

Obviously Mark Zuckerberg is trying the same thing with Meta, but that's been a failure.

People hate Musk's personality, but no companies occupy the reverence in people's mind as much as SpaceX and Tesla. Even a man for a while much richer than Elon, Bezos, couldn't muster much in terms of cultural relevance for Blue Origin than a PR stunt with William Shatner.

Does Musk have a internal "toolbox" of guiding principles and behaviors that tremendously advantage him in his current position as outgoing tech CEO, or is he just extremely lucky? Is it merely because of his seeming utopian ambitions that make him more than a guy merely obsessed with financial success that he has ended up much more wealthy than if he were a much more grounded, brass-tacks CEO?

[georgeg23]

He had help from the government, specifically Mike Griffin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

The rocket landing stuff largely borrow from DC-X and the spinoff work at NASA (+Lars Blackmore), all originally Strategic Defense Initiative stuff.

He used all that money from Mike as collateral for loans to Tesla.

He deserves some credit for impressive financial engineering and attracting talent under the guise of purpose ("going to Mars") but he took a lot of shady money along the way. And then there is the Saudis..

Most people who work with Musk 1:1 know he's unpredictable but pretty mentally unimpressive.

[gamegoblin]

If it were just a matter of money, any of the other billionaires who tried to build rocket companies would have succeeded. SpaceX got payload to orbit with ~$100M. The only other company that has come close to this is Rocket Lab with a bit over $200M invested.

By comparison, Bezos has been sinking > $1B per year into Blue Origin for nearly a decade without making it to orbit, and probably won't until 2024 at the earliest.

[Veedrac]

> Bezos has been sinking > $1B per year into Blue Origin for nearly a decade

Not to claim a false SpaceX-Blue equivalence here, but this is misleading. Most of the early work at Blue Origin was on a fairly tight budget, and SpaceX has always had significantly more development money than Blue.

It is true that Blue has taken much longer to get to orbit, but they're starting with effectively a Saturn V class vehicle (a bit smaller, but partially reusable), whereas SpaceX started their orbital ambitions with the vastly smaller Falcon 1.

The gap in technical competence and effectiveness is still huge, but it's not as stark as the money-to-orbit metric would have it seem. New Sheppard could have reached orbit long ago, if it was designed to be orbital; it's just there's no money (in a Bezos sense) in small launch, and that wasn't the tech it was designed to prove out, so it wasn't.

[crakenzak]

> Most of the early work at Blue Origin was on a fairly tight budget, and SpaceX has always had significantly more development money than Blue.

Seriously doubt this, please provide sources for these claims.

[Veedrac]

Here's an older sheet with revenue numbers not made by me: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O7nXhhKqfy5aVOn-Fsys...

My preferred way to estimate this is with employee counts instead, and the difference there is also stark, and then in the early days it's also possible to prove on first principles since Bezos wasn't rich enough at the time to compete with SpaceX's early NASA contracts.

Blue has ramped up a lot recently, as in the last couple of years, but you can also check SpaceX's recent investment rounds and they are burning money like crazy (a lot of this will be Starship and Starlink, since the former is a cost sink and the latter is still a ways off breaking even).

There is an argument to be made that the nature of this money was different, but SpaceX has always done the Amazon thing of reinvesting every penny they make, and certainly in the early days their costs were especially R&D dominated.

[georgeg23]

His "save humanity" messaging helped attract talent, something Bezos never learned how to do. But once people get to know Elon, it's clear his idealisms about Mars are manipulations and not sincerely held. He really means Strategic Defense Initiative. Elon is super pro-military technology (a hint is naming his kid after spy planes).

He basically believes his purpose is to build what the US DoD has been asking for for decades.. a space-based defense system, powered by AI to project force across the planet ("for our own good"). People who know him closely are aware. For example Grimes leaked a lot of this.

To be fair, Elon believe he's doing what he's supposed to / what is "right". It's just not the same as what he says to get people to work for him or be his fans. Talented people often won't work on military technology if they know that's what it's for, so he bends the truth.

[irthomasthomas]

It could be that his "save humanity" schtick actually attracts the wrong type of talent. See, when I was a full time programmer, about a decade ago, I really believed in Musk. It was only later, when I had more time on my hands that I started to fact check his claims, resulting in spiraling disillusionment.

So, I think Musk companies must be recruiting people who are young, and somewhat niaeve. I can't imagine many mature engineers being attracted to the crypto-bro atmosphere, unless they, themselves, are as conceited as Musk and happy to be in on the con.

[planetsprite]

This is true. I had a friend who programmed part of one of SpaceX's satellites, basically working as an unpaid intern. He spent 80 hours a week working on it non stop, sleeping in the lab, all while finishing his undergraduate CS degree.

The same thing with Elon's Hyperloop pod competitions. A completely meritless future technology still saw millions of free man-hours poured into being the creators of the first step into the future. As smart as everyone who participated in it was, the prestige of everything Elon blinded them.

[ripe]

I agree. Musk's key talent is sales:

* Convincing investors to lend him money.

* Convincing talented people to come work on his projects.

And he lies convincingly. His methods sometimes do get results (Tesla electric cars, SpaceX), so to his fans, he's a genius. Most of his projects fail (Tesla self-driving, boring company, hyperloop, robotaxis, crypto, stonks, every single thing he's tweeted about), but his fans are happy to forgive or forget all about those.

With Twitter he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

[georgeg23]

Funny thing about Rocket Lab.. Mike Griffin is on their board.

[emadabdulrahim]

> Most people who work with Musk 1:1 know he's unpredictable but pretty mentally unimpressive.

Sources?

[pnt12]

People who don't like him really downplay his past achievements. I currently don't like him, but he's been involved in PayPal, Tesla and Space X, all companies which had/have a big impact in our world.

Some will say he bought some of these, or the engineers did the real work, or he got government and family funding. But so what? Lots of companies with funding and good engineers don't get anywhere. So I don't know what, but he's been doing somethings right for a very long time.

More recently? Only crap shots, in my opinion. The boring tunnel sucks. Self driving will likely never become a reality. The Twitter deal feels off. I miss the visionary Mars seeking Musk, what we have now is the libertarian boomer Musk and he's disappointing.

[threeseed]

You keep talking about people as if you they are one homogenous block that you deeply understand and represent.

Most people really couldn't care less about SpaceX, Tesla or the future of Twitter. And they definitely wouldn't put Musk at the pinnacle of cultural relevance.

It's a minority of the population that is on sites like this that care. And for many of us there is a much more discerning and skeptical attitude towards Musk and his antics.

[planetsprite]

He has 111 million followers on twitter. He isn't some niche tech celebrity.

[brewdad]

Half of them bots. As he discovered after bidding for ownership.

[bojo]

0.01% of the world population

[6502nerdface]

Well... by comparison the sitting president of the United States peaked at only ~89 million followers [1].

[1] https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/trump-twitter-ban-follo...

[threeseed]

You do understand that not everyone uses Twitter.

37% of the world doesn't even have internet.

[tomjakubowski]

Not that they're all 1:1 with real people but: 111 million is 1.4% of the world's population (~8B)

[hackernewds]

And by his measure far far less since most are bots.

[kart23]

SpaceX is cool. I think musk definitely draws excitement and his companies have great brand reputation. Tesla sells an idea, a lifestyle. When you look at the product, its not great. ill-thought out features (camera rain sensor, parking sensors being taken out), crappy materials, and promises that might never be delivered (self-driving).

I think musk really just is an optimist and a big thinker that is driving constantly towards the future, and people love that. Even if he accomplishes 10% of what he sets out to do, thats still a massive step forward.

[erikpukinskis]

* rapid, consistent posting cadence

* try audacious things and don’t give up

* aggressively, rudely shut down everything around you that’s not contributing to your audacious goal

* spend 80 hours a week working ferociously

… so, if that’s something you can do, it’s replicable

[bamboozled]

Honestly I think we’re all just scared he is going to help get the boy king elected and if that’s the case, if that happens there’s a good chance that will be the end of civilization as we know it.

That is legit the only reason anyone I know of cares at all about this deal.

[PM_me_your_math]

The drama is unbecoming. Contrary to claims, civilization didn't end when Trump took office. The economy didn't crash, it grew. Food prices didn't soar, they went down. Unemployment didn't go up, it went down, especially for minorities. Gas prices didn't hit $7 in California. Home energy bills went down. People had more disposable income and less tax burden. We didn't experience wild inflation. There was no prospect for a third world war.

But then Biden took office and many of those predictions came true through a variety of factors, not the least of which was the incompetence of State Governors, Chinese Communists and Democrats.

Funny how the real world works.

[bamboozled]

Are you actually serious or trolling?

The guy lost the election and did everything in his power to hang onto it, this is a serious and dangerous threat to modern western democratic civilization.

There was no prospect for a third world war.

Who is being dramatic now?

We didn't experience wild inflation.

No but the Trump administration helped cause it? Inflation is not something that just happens because Joe Biden likes inflation, it happens because of policy.

Funny how the real world works :)

[TimTheTinker]

... and now the media is like "this is fine (but it won't be if any conservative goals are accomplished)" while the world burns; whereas it was saying "the world is ending" while Trump was in office.

[bamboozled]

Nice unsubstantiated claims there...

[shkkmo]

> Even a man for a while much richer than Elon, Bezos, couldn't muster much in terms of cultural relevance for Blue Origin than a PR stunt with William Shatner.

When/if Blue Origin starts actually launching ships to orbit and then landing them, they'll gain a lot of relevance.

[mwint]

I mean, yeah? If I personally started launching ships to orbit and landing them, I would gain a lot of relevance too.

The point is, somehow SpaceX is able to do things Blue can’t. Combined with Tesla being able to do things other automakers can’t, it seems there’s a common factor.