Look at everyone else that is rich. At best, they donate their money helping poor people around the world. At worst, they use their wealth to buy lobbyists and lawyers to minimize their taxes.
Musk is doing something different. He's funding low-orbit satellites, rockets, electric cars, self-driving tech (and open sourcing the security side and patents to boot!), hyperloops, tunnels, solar panels, battery packs. I'm worried about some of it[1] but at least he's trying. It feels like everyone else in the world has this slow-moving kludge about them.
[1] I think autonomous devices should be highly regulated due to the risks of mass weaponization via cyber attack, for example.
Other billionaires are trying to make a difference in things that actually matter, like curing diseases or eliminating pollution. Hell, some of them are doing the same things that Elon is, but aren't so self-aggrandizing about it.
And their are others that recognize that hyperloops are a solution in search of a problem, that the hard part of tunneling isn't the boring but the post-boring activities (i.e., tube construction), and that self-driving isn't something you can solve in 6 months.
Yes and all his companies are growing and have a good return on investment. The public loans have been payed back.
There are so many companies who live of the government tit and rarely get called out because of it.
> Other billionaires are trying to make a difference in things that actually matter, like curing diseases or eliminating pollution. Hell, some of them are doing the same things that Elon is, but aren't so self-aggrandizing about it.
I agree that other people are doing good things also (the minority) but Elon is not really doing that. The reality is that society has aggrandized him. Every tweet of his causes a massive storm of tech blog entries, news articles, stock analysts and so on.
Elon for the most part like to make stupid insider jokes do stuff without technology. Everything else seems to be a sort of secondary less interesting things.
He did something almost impossible with SpaceX and Tesla. Boosters that go up and land back again? That’s nuts. Doing it at a peanut of existing cost. That’s takes some entrepreneurial and engineering skill. A high end pure electric car? That seems like a suicide business. It is however a very highly desirable car. It drives on highways by itself is just science fiction brought closer to reality.
Sure the guy says a lot of crap, sometimes his timelines are way off, he could be a bit sexist too. The world probably puts him on a pedestal.
You can’t however take away his accomplishments. He’s putting his money where his mouth is and trying to push the world towards sustainable energy/transport and first steps towards possibly another earth.
I'm trying to gauge whether "almost impossible" is literal or figurative here, given that (the) Eagle did the same sort of thing on the moon in 1969 without refurbishment between landing and take-off. Also, Blue Origin is relatively close in competition to Space X even though it might not seem like it to many. Almost impossible?
Musk executes on ideas. I think he gets too much credit for having all the ideas. Similar to Jobs in that sense.
Not Musk bashing, I am genuinely curious as to why you think that?
The space industry was terrible state and he disrupted it in many ways and is leading the charge on a new space industry totally chaining not just industry, but basically forcing change down governments throats including DoD, NASA and others.
Much the same could be argued about the car industry.
He simply thinks about problems differently. Listen to the interviews with the people that work with him, specially engineers.
Also, Bezos has Blue Origin.
FYI, Blue Origin has been at it longer that spaceX has existed. But SpaceX, spending at least 5X less money is landing orbital class rockets and whilst Blue Origin is doing suborbital flights.
not to argue, but both Blue Origin and SpaceX are private and don't disclose ther financial information, to my best knowledge. So where is this number coming from?
You couldn't be more wrong. They've had payload customers for their test flights. They also have 4 large customers signed up for their New Glenn rocket (in development).
BO has never reached orbit, and doesn't say much about how much they've spent, so no one knows what their costs will be.
Blue Origin is also developing VTVL rockets.
BO is expecting to have passenger flights by the end of 2018.
Nonetheless, I personally like the guy and wish him the best, we need more like him.