Re:Elon Musk's Ticket to Nowhere
by gremlinsinc on Saturday October 01, 2016 @03:37PM
(#12619537)
I agreed, people laughed at him when he went to Russia to spend his paypal money to buy rockets. Everyone counted him out and he almost did lose everything in 2008. They were really lean, and down to their last buck til the last minute NASA deal was landed, and the rest is history as they say. He's a genius and has a sense of perseverance that we haven't seen since the Wright Brothers -- two other people who were laughed at and ridiculed. I could imagine the author of this blog post writing the same thing about their stupid flying contraption.
Re:Elon Musk's Ticket to Nowhere
by RivieraKid on Saturday October 01, 2016 @03:43PM
(#12619560)
He's a pretty impressive enterpreneur, but haven't seen any evidence for the genius claim. Von Neumann, Gauss or Einstein were geniuses.
Korolev would probably get a Nobel prize if he wouldn't be shielded behind Soviet secrecy around his rocket program.
Korolev however had a mighty state backing his plans which he skillfully played. Musk does approximately similar things on the commercial playing field. His pace of achievements and the range of his programs shouldn't be underestimated.
And when it comes down to it, I for one am happy to see someone (Musk in this case but everyone else is welcome to step up) promoting visionary goals with this kind of passion. Watching the Apollo missions as a youngster led me towards a career in engineering but I have to admit most of todays focus on "disruptive applications" leaves me jaded. Will the next revolutionary to-do list really cause the transcendence of mankind? Musk estimates it will cost $10bn but if the VCs had any long-term vision there would be twenty times that promised towards this goal.
Note: if politician's in the U.S. had any vision they'd earmark half the defense budget towards science and medicine goals - We choose to go to mars in this decade and do the other things - not because they are easy but because they are hard.