[steno132]

I've said this before and I'll say this again: Space is not a amateur game.

I see a lot of young SV types thinking they want to build a deep tech space company. And they can. But it requires a couple years of deep training in of aeronautics and physics before you even know what's going on.

Elon for instance spent years studying space on his own before launching SpaceX. Elon's at a different level, but we can at least learn a few things from him and SpaceX.

[mrguyorama]

Buddy elon doesn't even understand basic physics, like classical motion and energy equations. Or do you not remember the time he was talking about "compressed gas thrusters" on Teslas? Such a system would be laughably ineffective and all it takes to understand that is a high school physics equation.

[carabiner]

Elon probably knows more engineering than Jim Farley or Dave Calhoun. I don't think you have a good handle on CEO competence in this industry. Musk is running circles around these guys.

[steno132]

Elon’s arguably the greatest founder in history. Either him, or JP Morgan. He doesn’t need to be more like a physician, physicians need to be more like him.

[mrguyorama]

Ah yes, person is great because they started off with resources other people don't, and were able to leverage those resources to get even more resources. Truly, we should all emulate that.

Oh, most people don't start off rich? Oh what a shame.

Elon bought Tesla, Elon is only vaguely a part of SpaceX, and every single other venture he has been involved with has either gone nowhere, been a scam/grift/lie (boring company, hyperloop, neurolink though it shouldn't be judged just yet) or even classic nepotism with Solar roofing.

Elon is such a good businessman, which is why he bought Twitter at the peak of it's valuation, continually flakes on all it's bills, publicly admits to losing half of that peak value, saddled it with a billion dollar a year debt, erased any brand recognition it might have to replace it with a stupid domain name he has been obsessed with for twenty years, lost half of the advertising revenue, blocked it off from public access, fired anyone who isn't a sycophant, and repeats really dumb conspiracy theories about fucking everything.

[firebat45]

There are tons of people that start off rich and do nothing with it. There are tons of people who start poor and go nowhere with that, or start poor and become rich, and still do nothing with it.

Yes, he was fortunate to be born above an arbitrary rich/poor line that many other people weren't. How about instead of judging him based on something he had no control over (the irony in that judgement is palpable), judge him for what he has done, regardless of where he started from.

I'm not at all a Musk fanboy but he is undeniably a "great" person. He's got ~several~ achievements that would make him a great person, which reinforces the point even more.

[Chris2048]

> Oh, most people don't start off rich?

How rich did Elon start off?

[mrguyorama]

Other than having fairly wealthy parents and family?

His payoff from paypal is not something most people will have access to. The dot com boom was basically a lottery.

[qwytw]

Before Paypal he sold a rudimentary yellow pages search engine to Compaq for $305 million so that they could merge it into their search engine.

Compaq managed to sell AltaVista for $2.3 billion 6 months later and not long before the crash so maybe it wasn't the stupidest move on their side.

[googlryas]

How wealthy were his parents and family? How many other people have parents and family that wealthy, or wealthier? How many of them end up being $100+ billionaires?

[Chris2048]

Many people are "fairly wealthy", yet don't end up as billionaires e.g. many doctors, lawyers or SWEs.

Elon family riches is uncertain: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine

[qwytw]

To be fair he made most of his initial wealth during the dot.com psychosis...

Not saying he isn't one of the greatest businessmen in history (well... assuming he's running Twitter to the ground for shits & giggles anyway) but selling a company for hundreds of millions back in those days does not necessarily was not necessarily that different from winning the lottery (being at the right time and the right place was enough).

[wolverine876]

> To be fair he made most of his initial wealth during the dot.com psychosis...

And now make money in another, partly self-created psychosis

[mecsred]

Physicians don't study physics, they have medical degrees. You're thinking of physicists.

[qwytw]

> physicians need to be more like him.

What does being a founder have to do with being a doctor?

Or a physicist for that matter?

[justrealist]

I'm not sure what strawman you are talking about, but every space company in SV I have seen has been started by domain experts, mostly aerospace and hardware engineers.

There are also a lot of space companies focusing on a narrow niche that doesn't involve rockets — sometimes imagery (Planet, other satellites), sometimes 3D printing, etc. It's not like deep training in aeronautics will make you an expert in 3D printing in space - there's not a 101 guide to the space, it's novel tech.

[qwytw]

> Space is not a amateur game

So you're saying that the people who designed and launched the Viking lander back in the 70s (it landed on Mars when Musk was about 5) were amateurs?

Well as far as Mars exploration is concerned they achieved much more than him with basically stone age tech compared to what's available now...