All of those things existed before Musk. Is he retroactively giving himself credit for those things like he did with Tesla?

EVs are over a century old. SpaceX was recreating NASA research. Subways have been a thing for over a century; literally millions of people use them every day. Paypal's tech stack used Thiel's startup's technology; they jettisoned everything from Musk's stack and moreover fired him for gross incompetence.

> SpaceX was recreating NASA research.

Reading such an absurd and idiotic reductionist take on HN just makes me sad. I mostly speaks to you having absolutely zero knowlage about space technology and rocketry.

> moreover fired him for gross incompetence.

They fired him because he had a 10 year business plan to replace banks and become the main monetary system for all payments. A combination of being a bank, an online payment provider and Apple pay.

The other founders wanted to sell the company and make quick cash.

> Subways have been a thing for over a century;

Yeah such an asshole wanting to improve tunneling technology. Only assholes try to improve technology. We should just shoot anybody in the head who tries to improve on technology that is more then 10 years old.

The first rockets landed in the 70s, so yeah the tech existed already long ago. It wasn't used because rockets (e.g. Ariane 5) were developed to carry shuttle crat and nobody believed there were enough launches to make reusable rockets worthwhile. There are no shuttles anymore, and whether or not the launch market is big enough isn't sure yet neither.

You are continue to embrace yourself and you are not worth talking to. Bye.

Do you embarrass myself? Because whom I embrace is hardly your business.

I’m curious if there is anything that, if shown to be true, you would acknowledge as evidence of his accomplishment?

> All of those things existed before Musk.

I didn't say Elon Musk invented electric cars.

I'm saying he accomplished something in these fields.

If you want to pull him down among the rest of us, why don't you just point out that he's inhaling and exhaling in exactly the same way as everyone else?

In other news: honeybee tongue hairs repel water

Pssh, oil repelled water way before honey bees, they're not that special!

No they did not.

> EVs are over a century old.

But not an economic success and there was (and still is to be frank) no successful EV industry besides Tesla. A lot of fanfare with little results.

> SpaceX was recreating NASA research.

NASA and competitors dismissed any idea of landing rockets or even reusability in the first place. It was deemed a failed idea. This is why the SLS has been created by NASA as reusability was deemed a failure.

On the other items besides PayPal, they aren't successes yet so I'll reserve judgement.

On the whole "jettisoned" stuff there's a lot of conflicting reports on that and he wasn't fired.

Oh man, if one can only be considered accomplished when inventing completely new things I will never amount to anything :(