[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.