Yeah, he certainly invests in innovative high-tech industries and I like that a lot. But he also overpromises a lot, e.g. coast-to-coast tesla autopilot (probably not happening anytime soon) or something actually useful with the neurochip (also years ahead). some of his remarks on AI also tells me that he has a feeling that he knows everything about everything but that might not be exactly the case. he is a smart guy and he got rich basically by having a really good electronic payment system. but that does not make him a universal engineer/scientist/philosopher.

“Shoot for the stars but if you happen to miss shoot for the moon instead.”

There's something to be said about the value of setting wildly unachievable goals. It takes you further than you might have thought possible.

No other company?

Nissan Leaf? Close to 1/2 million sold.

The Leaf came years after Tesla and was a cautious, follow-the-leader side bet by Nissan.

The Tesla Roadster was a radical re-thinking of the automobile -- an industry that had been stagnating for over 50 years -- and an all-in investment in electric vehicle future by an eccentric billionaire. Nowhere near as bold or life-or-death in either financial outlay or feature design.

Do a side-by-side feature comparison of the original Leaf and Roadster to see just how far apart the two were in thinking, design and ambition.

The Leaf was and is essentially the belief that Tesla's vehicles would be too expensive for the average customer so Nissan could ride Tesla's tailwind to sell a more affordable model. And they have, and that's fine.

But it boggles my mind when people imply that Nissan's efforts in electric vehicles are in any way a reasonable comparison to what Tesla has done.

The LEAF however is a fine rebuttal to the GGP claim “No other company has managed to sell fully electric cars en-masse like Tesla has done.”

> No other company has managed to send rockets to space and then land them again.

* orbit

Not yet. The boosters don't reach orbital velocity, that's the second stage.

> Not yet. The boosters don't reach orbital velocity, that's the second stage.

Fair enough.

I suppose typing the whole thing out:

"SpaceX is the first company to launch a rocket to orbit and land its first stage"

is the most accurate way to phrase it. I was just trying to acknowledge companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, who have landed rockets or parts thereof before SpaceX.

The big difference, however, is that those efforts have been essentially economically meaningless, whereas SpaceX's efforts have been quite impactful.

NASA was reusing orbital 'upper stages' (although not boosters or ETs) for a few years. This little thing called a 'Space Shuttle.'

That's valid from a certain perspective. Technologically, Shuttle was a tour de force, although economically extremely terrible. Once it was decided to retire Shuttle,p probably the most common perspective among industry experts was that Shuttle "proved" reuse was not economically feasible and expendable was the way to go. So while Shuttle pushed technology to the limit, in many ways it actually held back development of reusable rocket technology (at least from a national policy perspective, which might have actually been for the best as it created the space that SpaceX needed to develop their solution commercially).

So in practical terms, Shuttle might have actually held back reusable rocket use more than advanced it. Fantastic achievement, though, and really not too bad economically when you consider all of its capabilities (only a fraction of which were used for any given mission, though).

Given how much of a dog the Shuttle was, you're not really making as strong an argument as you think here.

What argument do you think I am making? It was never my intention to make an argument. I'm just pointing out that the Shuttle was a reusable rocket. I'm certainly not talking about practicality or economics. I'm not detracting from anything SpaceX has done, though it seems like you have to walk on eggshells around some fanboys who perceive mere mention of the Shuttle as an attack I guess.

That's a shame. I've got nothing against people dragging Musk for indulging the same fantasies I grew out of around age fourteen, I just prefer they be good at it.

Mentioning the reusability of the shuttle is not "dragging Elon Musk", please get a grip. I am a fan of what SpaceX is doing. I would not drag on Elon Musk by criticizing the accomplishments of SpaceX, there are far better ways to do that.

> NASA was reusing orbital 'upper stages' (although not boosters or ETs) for a few years. This little thing called a 'Space Shuttle.'

Oh, the thing that had to be essentially refurbished before being able to fly again?

Correct.

(Though I forgot that they also refurbed the SRBs. I think the SSMEs are more impressive, they got 19 uses out of one of them.)

SRBs are complete trash after one use, they are a great reliable source of fuel, but it certainly wasn't feasible to reuse.

They only land the first stage(s), and those don't see space...

The first stages regularly exceed the Karman line; the first stage's apogee is normally 10 to 20 kilometres higher than stage separation.

It’s not Musk, but the workers that did all of that.

???? who corralled those workers? I always see this argument, if Milton has the same ability to bring together talented people as Musk does, his bullshit will be gladly accepted - both have proven the ability to bullshit, but only one has brought together groundbreaking teams thus far

Corralling the workers does not mean doing the technical work. they are different skill sets, and the original comment conflated the two.

The Bailey: Elon Musk is a great engineer.

The Motte: Elon Musk is great at hiring engineers.

There’s always danger of “smelling your own farts” syndrome, though. Like the whole submarine thing: it didn’t work! No doubt that Musk is very smart and knowledgable in the areas he has excelled. But a few times now he seemed to have decided that this means he’s smart in a whole load of other areas too, without much evidence. Another example is almost any time he talks about AI.

Not to go threw this again but ... if you actually read in detail what was going on, the 'submarine' was developed as a contingency only for the smallest child. It was developed because expert at the scene were not sure they could get the kid out. It was a worst case contingency plan for 1 kid from the very beginning (that's what it was sized for).

Of course in the media it was all like 'Elon rides in on spaceship and promises to build submarine to save everybody'. And we don't know if it 'didn't work' as it was not tried, because the smallest kid was eventually brought threw with the same methods.

The whole point here is that Elon wanted to help but clearly he couldn't help with diving, so with a team of engineers they tried to work on a small part of the problem. Only to then get shit on relentlessly for working something out of the box.

It was similar to when everybody was shitting on Elon because apparently he delivered the wrong products to help with Covid. Later turned out that Tesla had excellent contact with doctors in China because of their production facilities in China and focused on delivering what doctors in China told them was useful.

All in all there is no way around it, Elon has started many successful companies and pretty much all of them have done some or many impressive things. Very often with the experts in the field claiming his plans were impossible or buissness suicide. He might say something wrong once in a while, but you better actually listen what exactly he is saying and why, before dismissing it claiming he is just smelling his farts.