Re:SpaceX Starship Users' Guide [pdf]
by numlock86 on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @02:13AM
(#25342734)
What really stands out is the impact of this guy, too. Imagine he just wouldn't have done those things. Imagine no PayPal, no Tesla, no SpaceX ... it's easy to say "Yeah, someone else would have probably done it then." but that's just not right. Otherwise we'd see a lot more of those things by now. Sure, there are some now, but most if not all are the result of him setting the bar in the first place.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
"People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better" - Elon Musk, at Ted 2017
This really nails it. The world does not build itself. We build the world. Nothing is preordained, except in retrospect.
Tesla and SpaceX were definitely years or decades ahead of their time, but PayPal would have happened without Musk. There are lots of competitors. PayPal was the one that hit the right features in the right place at the right time (with the right lawyers to talk to the right regulators), but it was far from unqiue.