[Terr_]

I disagree with the implied-worldview behind that: Such progress is fundamentally incremental and stochastic, rather than hinging on "Great Men" (or women).

For a great many discoveries or inventions or ideas, digging a little further into the history shows the famous-people often aren't the first to say/try something, but the ones who attempted it again at a more favorable time or place, were more powerful or influential, or just plain got lucky.

[adastra22]

We're talking about SpaceX specifically, not Tesla or any of his other companies. In the context of SpaceX, what GP said is absolutely true. The rocket industry has not been getting incrementally better over time. If anything, costs have incrementally gone up over time. Until SpaceX, nobody was able to significantly lower launch costs. Then SpaceX came along and succeeded where dozens of previous startups had failed, and the price floor drops out. In this particular case, "revolutionary" is the right descriptor to use.

[just_boost_it]

I mean, my world view is that you should listen to people's ideas when they've had some good ones in the past. I'm not saying we have to believe they're always right.

I don't believe in great men, but I don't believe innovation just stochastically appears either. Behind all those little steps upwards is someone who's stumbled on some kind of insight and did something about it. Sometimes an idiot can get lucky and have it work out once, but Musk has done it several times.