[simonh]

Musk is a fascinating example. Incredibly hard working, visionary, detail oriented. Without him we'd probably not have had reusable rockets for another generation or more. With Tesla he also accelerated electric car adoption. He was also brutally honest about their chances of success, when pitching SpaceX to the other initial investors he gave it a 10% chance of success. He was little more confident about Tesla, saying the main objective was to prove the concept and push adoption across the industry. Yes he's famous for giving absurdly short time scales for advances like "full self driving", and this is reckless and irresponsible, but I think he genuinely believes what he says at the time.

Yet he's also a sociopathic fascist arsehole. It turns out these traits are not all on the same axis.

[8note]

we probably would. the key to both those things was government money and support

[simonh]

Sure, but I've no problem with that. I think there is a role for government helping get new technologies and industries off the ground. It can make sense to offer tax breaks to get new future sources of tax revenue going for example. I'm not a fan of intrusive industrial policy in general, but that's a practical and not an ideological objection. It can make sense to meet some strategic goals.

The government also legitimately needs space launch capacity, they're a customer for that. Look at how commercial companies invest in the buildout of supplier infrastructure, or offer framework contracts to help suppliers to make necessary investments.