His two main companies have apparently taken risks that established companies in those areas were not willing to do.
Could Boeing built a self-landing reusable rocket? Almost certainly. Would they have been willing to, considering it almost certainly involves failing in explosive ways multiple times? That may be a risk they aren't willing to take.
> Could Boeing built a self-landing reusable rocket? Almost certainly.
McDonnell Douglas is part of Boeing and (before they were part of Boeing) did the DC-X prototype.
One failure ended the program, but it was transfered from McDonnell to NASA at that point I think and funding was shifted towards the reusable VentureStar. But it did demonstrate reuse and went through a partial failure of a hydrogen explosion and recovery:
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_McDonnell_Douglas_DC-...
Yeah, basically exactly what I would expect - they're perfectly capable technology-wise, but they're not capable bureaucratically.
Which, if Musk has value, is where it comes in.
s/at that point/before that point
Re:Elon Musk owns 9.2% of Twitter
by 1123581321 on Monday April 04, 2022 @09:40AM
(#30906517)
I would say itβs common. Both SpaceX and Tesla almost ran out of money with Musk maximally invested. Both moments were widely reported 5-10 years ago when they happened.
Edit: Just kind of seems in contradiction to the previous stories of him where it focused on his intelligence/de facto technocratic authority to save the world. It wasn't so much his courage, but his moral rectitude combined with capital resources -- "he is going to save the world! Take us to mars!"