He does what any good businessman would do. He looks for money on the table. In this case its areas where research has been done but it hasn't been operationalized.

That being said I dont mean to minimize what Musk or the teams he has assembled have done. The first 90% of the work toward a new innovation is 90% of the work, then the last 10% is 90% of the work.

SpaceX basically finished the Delta Clipper project.