[fcarraldo]

Which hasn't yet been proven to be either technically or economically viable, even on paper. It's a pipe dream.

The cynical viewpoint is that this is Elon capitalizing on current datacenter hype to inflate SpaceX's valuation based on theoretically overcoming tremendous amounts of hard physics problems, over the next 5-10 years. As he did with FSD, Boring Company / Hyperloop, Twitter, etc.

[lbreakjai]

We've been through it over and over. "Tesla is not a car company it's a X company" where X is the current trending theme.

So far, Tesla has been a blockchain, energy, robotics, and now a compute company.

[inglor_cz]

Neither was reuse of rockets and I remember the ex-boss of Arianespace laughing at those bozos of SpaceX who try to pretend that they are a serious space business.

Musk made some bad bets, but also some good ones (Falcon rockets, Starlink) and some at least promising ones (Starship, Neuralink). And Twitter bought him enormous political influence - I wouldn't consider this a failure either, from the realistically-cynical point of view. That cannot be measured by revenue alone.

[Jtarii]

Twitter was a "success" for musk sure, it was also a catastrophic failure for the rest of western civilisation.

Musk has been coasting on his successes from 10+ years ago. He has nothing good to offer anyone in 2026.

[inglor_cz]

I think the jury is still out on the impact of all the other social networks.

If the connection between fast falling birthrates and smartphone addiction is proven, the total global loss of life (in this case, never born life) due to the products that many of us here helped craft into perfection may rival that of Mongol expansion under Genghis Khan, and Twitter/X is hardly the worst offender in that group. Even Twitter's impact on the balance of left/right politics in the world is relatively transient and small when judged against this horrible development whose aftereffect will stalk the world for a century.

Yes, it wasn't an actual intent of people like Zuckerberg, but as far as catastrophic failures of civilizations go, they don't have to be intended.

[iknowstuff]

Falling birthrates predate smartphones. Where did you come up with that lol

[inglor_cz]

Look at the underlying mechanisms.

Couples deciding to have fewer kids does predate smartphones indeed.

Fewer couples even forming and more people being lonely is strongly suspected to be a smartphone aftereffect.

[iknowstuff]

>90% of the launch market and a great WORLDWIDE isp.

[inglor_cz]

Then there is the role of Starlink terminals in an actual war.

The losses caused to the Russians by drones using Starlink for connection are pretty painful, and when SpaceX switched off non-whitelisted terminals in the theatre of war, the Russian army was thrown into disarray due to sudden failures of communication between their units. AFAIK they haven't yet fully overcome that problem.

The Russians certainly wish to have something like Starlink right now, in 2026.

[simondotau]

In the first weeks of the war, Russia targeted communications infrastructure in Ukraine. They performed cyberattacks against Viasat, rendering thousands of satellite modems unusable. They performed destructive cyberattacks against Ukraine government and telecommunications targets. Cell towers and fibre optic lines were targeted, as well as electricity infrastructure. And they started aggressively jamming wireless communications. Much of this was disastrously effective.

Starlink was one of the only reliable ways Ukraine had for remote military communications, without which Ukraine would have not been able to defend its territory nearly as effectively. Though it's impossible to know, it's plausible that Ukraine might not exist today but for Starlink.

[richwater]

> He has nothing good to offer anyone in 2026.

Falcon launches cost dramatically _less_ than comparables like Ariane. In Fact, Ariane had to beg europe of subsidies to keep the program competitive.

Meanwhile, Starship is well on it's way.

You don't know what you're talking about.

[bastardoperator]

Wait, you think Elon solved these problems?

[inglor_cz]

Personally, I don't think so, but let us at least try to be consistent.

"If an unpopular person's corporation C succeeded at activity X, it is the success of the regular employees and everyone but him, but if his another corporation D failed at activity Y, it is solely his responsibility and shame (if not a proof of outright fraud)" is a classical emotionally charged double standard.

[simondotau]

Do you think there's a single Apple fanboy who thinks that Steve Jobs ever had any novel insight in programming, or had any novel insight in circuit design?

Now, with that answer in mind, allow me to contend that there isn't a single Elon fanboy who thinks that Elon is personally inventing automotive and rocketry technologies out of whole cloth.

What both men did well is identify promising unconventional technology pathways and steer capital investment towards them. Jobs had a knack for understanding computers as a consumer product, and for communicating the value of new products. Musk has a knack for understanding the limits of physical engineering, and the wealth (and appetite for risk) to spam the right "build" buttons endlessly.

Beyond a narrow range of remarkable competencies, neither are particularly interesting persons. I wouldn’t look to either of them for takes on sociology, politics, biological sciences, philosophy or chord progressions.

[richwater]

Like it or not he founded (sometimes in-part) but drove these companies to success by demanding deliverables others thought were crazy.

[petra]

For most of his sucsessful ideas he had sophisticated investors, VC's, to judge the idea and take the bet(at an early stage).

Would any VC(one without a conflict of interest) invest now, for the long term, based on those visions?