1) He didn’t start with billions

2) Neither Boeing nor Ford have put a car into a trans-Martian Solar orbit, and they did start with billions

> Neither Boeing nor Ford have put a car into a trans-Martian Solar orbit

Good?

This reminds me of the scene from the film "Tin Cup" where he asks "You ever shoot par with a 7 iron?" and his rival replies "Hell Roy, it never even occurred to me to try." (The backstory being that Tin Cup and his caddy broke all of his other golf clubs in a childish argument.)

Boeing made the x-37, which is autonomously roving around space, and landing on its own.

Musk pointed a rocket at the sky and pressed play. In terms of difficulty, boosting a car into an extended orbit is trivial. Manoeuvring a "space plane" to intersect multiple satellites, grab them and return to earth, that is orders of magnitude harder.

Ford make cheap cars world wide at volume, and pioneered the production line.

as for point one, like me, he was in the right place at the right time. I am rich because I joined the right start up and got bought out. yeah I worked hard, but not anywhere near hard enough to justify the money I got.

The same with musk.

> as for point one, like me, he was in the right place at the right time.

Let me rephrase:

SpaceX was valued at less than one billion dollars when they launched the first Falcon 9 to orbit.

The total money raised in the investment rounds only exceeded $1 billion in 2015, after 13 launches.

Total raised from investors only exceeded $2 billion, enough to be called “billions” plural, in Jan 2019, which is just before SpaceX got Starhopper off the ground.

https://craft.co/spacex/funding-rounds

In comparison, the per-launch cost of the SLS is estimated to be “over $2 billion”, plus dev cost, and an Orion capsule would be extra.

SpaceX didn’t need billions to achieve impressive things, just for ridiculous things like “enable the colonisation of Mars”.

Ford pioneered modern car manufacturing, and Boeing got stuff farthet out in space. Shooting a Tesla on a SpaceX rocket was just a publicity stunt. A genius one it seems.

> Boeing got stuff farthet out in space.

Despite which SLS is still not flying and Starliner is stuck in test flights and not human certified, despite both having been started a bit before SpaceX was being valued as high as $1.3 billion.

Similar with Ford: fantastic past! Yet the money from that past win didn’t let them do what Musk did.

QED, “billions” are not enough by themselves.

What was the gain from having a car in a trans-Martian orbit other than yet more space junk?

Judging by the difference between the funding rounds 2 months before the launch and the one 2 months after, it gained $3.4 billion.

I should have been more specific. The gain for humanity.

Other than a demonstration that the new experimental launch vehicle worked? Sure, shame nobody took him up on the offer a free launch, but I kinda understand why people didn’t want to risk its maiden flight.

(Something something Romans: https://youtu.be/Qc7HmhrgTuQ).

it was a demo flight for prospective customers. I don't think it was intended to do anything for humanity.