[zeteo]

>I guess [Musk] just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket

Ah, I love it when people think they're sarcastic but they're correct:

>"I was sitting behind [Elon Musk] on the flight back to London when he looked at me over the seat and said, 'I think we can build a rocket ourselves.'" He showed Cantrell the spreadsheet he'd been working on. "I looked at it and said, I'll be damned — that's why he's been borrowing all my books. He'd been borrowing all my college textbooks on rocketry and propulsion. You know, whenever anybody asks Elon how he learned to build rockets, he says, 'I read books.' Well, it's true. He devoured those books. He knew everything. He's the smartest guy I've ever met, and he'd been planning to build a rocket all along. [1]

[1]http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-int...

[damoncali]

I can assure you (as someone who has designed part of a rocket) that Elon Musk did nothing even close to designing a rocket. That paragraph describes a school project for a propulsion class, not a rocket design. Good on him for doing what he's doing, but he's not doing it alone.

[roc]

If the fellow from the article read a few books and then proceeded to hire a team of the best and brightest specialists to help refine and perfect his concept, I'm thinking the response would be different.

[baak]

...didn't he have a Bachelor's in Physics? Either way, he didn't build/design the rocket himself. There was an enormous team.

[farinasa]

Go watch the tour of Space X. He shows their current rockets and prototypes and proceeds to explain that it was another guy that built it in his garage. Elon funded it's production.